Loss of Human Touch

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In the technological age, we’ve seen the shift from human interaction to interaction through cyberspace.

With the step into web3, possibilities of life moving from reality to a sort of techno-reality become much more likely.

For some background; Web1 was the first iteration of the internet, it was the most pure form of content consumption on the internet, creators were typically developers and content was mainly in the form of text or image. This was the internet of information consumption, it’s the earliest version of the internet that came from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA. The read-only web.

Web2 is the internet that most of us grew up with and are more familiar with, it’s the internet that we use today — think of it as the interactive/social web. You don’t have to be a developer to publish content, anyone can be a content creator. It has its faults.

New mediums have given rise to new forms of making money off users. Companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon make their billions off the data they monetize and sell to advertisers. Data is the oil of web2. Another issue of web two is that of data breaches, you don’t own your data online and companies often steal the user’s data without their consent. This is what Web3 seeks to solve.

Web3 is the next step of the internet. The goal of web3 is to be a decentralized internet experience based on the blockchain, apps won’t be owned by a central agency but instead by the user. In theory, the user will earn this ownership stake by aiding in development and maintenance of the servers. Web3 is the new enabler of artificial identity curation.

The dangers of losing yourself to a virtual world make the dangers of hyperreality into more of a reality than theory.

Entering the metaverse and creating a new life inside a virtual world adds to the desire to escape the late capitalist hell we’re living in. Science Fiction tales imagined humanity seeking new inhabitable planets when Earth ran its course, instead we have found solace and safety inside a VR headset.

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