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Web3 has many reasons it could fail. I choose to be optimistic. > The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the pla

Web3 has many reasons it could fail. I choose to be optimistic. > The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works. https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306 https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv...

user-the-name 5y ago
The optimistic view is that it will all crash and burn tomorrow. The pessimistic view is that it will survive, and cause even more harm than it has already.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  - freen 5y ago
    I like tulips. I buy tulip bulbs. That they are worth 10x the annual wages of a skilled worker is preposterous. At least they don’t churn through terawatts and terawatts. Blockchains will exist. They’ll do stuff. Like tulips. Anyone who bet on tulips continuing to be worth 10x the annual wages of a skilled worker was, in fact, the greater fool and discovered the hard way that there was no greater fool than them. They are beautiful, though, tulips.
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hunterb123 5y ago
A user replied to you, then I asked him to expand on his doomsday prediction. He went made an analogy involving tulips and and flagged my rebuttal and now the conversation is gone. The gist was, tulips are flowers, not distributed apps and ledgers. He has no specific criticism, just a doomsday prediction, fear mongering, and false equivalencies.
Jasper_ 5y ago
The last paragraph is ominously correct: > What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where—in the holy names of Education and Progress—important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued. This could have been written last week about the metaverse, or the experiences we faced with the pandemic. That article is quite on point in retrospect. What Clifford forgot is that replacing salespeople and customer support with nothing is valuable because it cuts costs. A CD-ROM (or or iPad app, to update the analogy) sucks as a replacement for a real teacher, but it is a hell of a lot cheaper...

user-the-name 5y ago

The optimistic view is that it will all crash and burn tomorrow. The pessimistic view is that it will survive, and cause even more harm than it has already.

hunterb123 5y ago
- freen 5y ago
  I like tulips. I buy tulip bulbs. That they are worth 10x the annual wages of a skilled worker is preposterous. At least they don’t churn through terawatts and terawatts. Blockchains will exist. They’ll do stuff. Like tulips. Anyone who bet on tulips continuing to be worth 10x the annual wages of a skilled worker was, in fact, the greater fool and discovered the hard way that there was no greater fool than them. They are beautiful, though, tulips.
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hunterb123 5y ago

A user replied to you, then I asked him to expand on his doomsday prediction. He went made an analogy involving tulips and and flagged my rebuttal and now the conversation is gone. The gist was, tulips are flowers, not distributed apps and ledgers. He has no specific criticism, just a doomsday prediction, fear mongering, and false equivalencies.

Jasper_ 5y ago

The last paragraph is ominously correct: > What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where—in the holy names of Education and Progress—important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued. This could have been written last week about the metaverse, or the experiences we faced with the pandemic. That article is quite on point in retrospect. What Clifford forgot is that replacing salespeople and customer support with nothing is valuable because it cuts costs. A CD-ROM (or or iPad app, to update the analogy) sucks as a replacement for a real teacher, but it is a hell of a lot cheaper...