Ask HN: Are things like Web3 holding back innovation?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30403258

by jusonchan81 • 4 years ago

10 11 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I think it’s cool that such a huge community is behind things like Web3, NFTs etc. That also means a ton of talent and investments is being directed into this.

But is this stealing the focus from things that could make a bigger impact to human life? Are there other better things we could be doing instead with the amount of energy spent in these areas?

jsiaajdsdaa2• 4 years ago

It isn't necessarily. Sometimes fools are parted with their money and the recipients go on to do things beneficial to society.

The scary realization though is that the problems that really need solving in our world are hard.

latexr4• 4 years ago

Sometimes fools are parted with their money and the recipients go on to do things beneficial to society.

A common thread with NFT projects is lying and rug pulling[1]. Everything about this movement comes back to trying to make an easy buck, it’s a stretch to claim this could be beneficial to society[2]:

(…) made off with $30,000 and wrote that the charity to which they'd promised to donate "will instead now be... my bank account".

[1] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?theme=rugPull

[2] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?theme=rugPull&id=2022-02-06-2

jsiaajdsdaa2• 4 years ago

Depending on which way you look at it, Jeff Bezos turned dubious labor practices into a space program.

smt883• 4 years ago

Yes, but adtech (Google and Facebook) is much, much worse. Many of the most talented programmers work ultimately toward adtech, not making society better.

latexr4• 4 years ago

Those aren’t the only two options. There’s more to life and technology than blockchains and ads.

smt883• 4 years ago

I have no idea what you think I'm saying. I said that adtech wastes a lot of R&D talent to make our lives generally worse instead of better.

I don't need someone to tell me that other things exist in life because I've never been either a developer or a customer of either adtech or blockchain.

SMVS• 4 years ago

Web3 and blockchain are both an ideological and technological framework. Rather than holding anything back, they're originating and introducing a new way of looking at both personal data and how it's ingested and interpreted by web services.

All the crypto criticisms, the scams and rugs and mlm schemes; these are all characteristics of capitalism first, technologically implemented.

Where Web3 works, in the DAOs and decentralised governance systems, in the melding of decentralised tech and decentralised authority over it, that's where Web3 will flourish.

As humanity takes on the task of redressing the effects of capitalism, this ideological framework will guide our social development in the same way the blockchain is now reinventing software development.

throwawaynay• 4 years ago

" the blockchain is now reinventing software development. "

what is it reinventing exactly? how to handle data as inefficiently as possible?

latexr4• 4 years ago

Are there other better things we could be doing instead with the amount of energy spent in these areas?

Yes, including literally nothing. We could stop wasting all that power on reinventing worse versions of what we already have and breathing new life into old scams.

Ask HN: Are things like Web3 holding back innovation?

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