Technology and Society: May you live in interesting times | Opinion

EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to email difficulties, this month’s edition of “Technology and Society” was not able to be published on its usual location of Page C4. It is being printed here this month instead. Typically, “Technology and Society” can be found on Page C4 on the second weekend of every month.

The title of this column is purported to be an old saying, meant not as a blessing but as a curse that seems applicable to today’s tumultuous world.

We are certainly living in interesting times but not “interesting” in the good sense. Not only are we contentious amongst ourselves in terms of politics but between countries as well.

In this article I would like to discuss how technology, more specifically, the Internet, has exacerbated or bettered the situation.

The benefits provided by the Web initially were obvious: it was meant to be a mechanism to enhance the flow of information whether it be scientific or social, giving rise to sites like Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Almost no one can argue that it did not advance science in most of its endeavors.

The social side…not so much, mostly because it not only promotes communication of information, but misinformation as well.

As Mark Twain correctly observed, “ A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” We still struggle to find the right balance between freedom of speech and constraint of corrosive or hate speech.

An early example of an enhancement to the flow of information would be the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in the mid fifteenth century. Before that time, knowledge could only be recorded and saved by scribes with pens on vellum or paper and only the wealthy had access to it.

With the printing press, dissemination of this information was able to reach most all citizens and one could argue this effect galvanized the need for reading skills in the general populace.

If there had been a Scribes’ Union at that time, I’m sure they would have gone on strike in fear of losing their livelihood, but if you talked to the “man on the street”/general public, they would be tickled pink.

A mother lode of information was just ready to be released and disseminated. Any new invention is bound to be feared by some and happily received by the rest of the populace and the Internet is no exception.

Jumping ahead to the mid 20th century, the Internet began as a tool for scientists to share their research remotely, as well as more quickly, and since then has progressed to more social purposes which allow the average citizen to remotely and easily attend to their everyday needs and desires, ranging from food and health to entertainment and news (which seems to have become another form of entertainment, much like horror movies.)

In last month’s column, I mentioned to stay tuned for many of the benefits of the coming Web 3.0, but not any of its pitfalls. Not everyone is of the opinion that it will be the boon that is currently touted, mostly by those who stand to profit monetarily.

When I searched on the phrase, “how to profit from web3”, it came back with, “About 2,380,000 results”.

However, many with computer expertise think it’s a scam to steer clear of and, if implemented, will go the way of the SONY Betamax (although, if you do a search, you will find existing basic models for sale in the 50-500 dollar range.)

The most scathing arguments against Web 3.0 (aka Web3) that I have found are laid out in the piece by Stephen Diehl: “Web 3 is Bull—t”.

“Web3 is a deeply polarizing topic for technologists because it’s designed to be that way. It’s a rhetorical trick to set up a false dichotomy between the legacy internet world of popup ads and Zuckerbergs—which legitimately does suck—and a fantasy world built on technologically incoherent pipe dreams and phoney crypto-populism…,” Diehl writes.

“Web3 is that technical manifestation of this empty grasping for a messianic solution that’s going to solve all our problems. It’s entirely rational to want to build a more decentralized technology stack and to aspire to a more egalitarian internet, more equitable society, and a better world. However web3 is not the golden path that leads us to that world.

“At its core web3 is a vapid marketing campaign that attempts to reframe the public’s negative associations of crypto assets into a false narrative about disruption of legacy tech company hegemony. It is a distraction in the pursuit of selling more coins and continuing the gravy train of evading securities regulation.”

“We see this manifest in the circularity in which the crypto and web3 movement talks about itself. It’s not about solving real consumer problems. The only problem to be solved by web3 is how to post-hoc rationalize its own existence.”

Diehl claims that the blockchain data structure which is the foundation of Web3 has inherent weaknesses. (To those who wish to explore just what blockchain is, I find Wikipedia to be a good source).

Blockchain databases (e.g. those that involve transactions concerning the transfer of money) that are distributed over the entire net as opposed to being centralized to a particular machine or enterprise are still pie-in-the-sky because they use much more energy, do not scale when updating with new hardware and software, and run slower than current centralized databases such as those that Google, Amazon and many, many enterprises offer.

In fairness, there are many businesses which dispute the claim that the blockchain strategy for building Web3 is an energy hog,

If you visit this website ((https://blog.web3labs.com/blockchain-myths-energy-consumption), you will find a nice diagram for how PoW works.

“Due to Bitcoin being the best known blockchain, many believe that the issues Bitcoin have are the same for every blockchain application across the board,” the article by Conor Svensson writes.

“It is true that Bitcoin is very computationally heavy—its annual energy consumption is estimated to be more than 75 TWh, which is comparable to the power consumption of Chile — but Bitcoin is only one blockchain-based project. Its power usage stems from the fact that it uses a consensus algorithm called Proof of Work (abbreviated as: PoW), which requires miners to submit proof that they’ve done the required work, as the name implies, in order to collect their reward before anyone else can beat them to it.”

Fortunately, or unfortunately, we don’t get to vote on the design of Web3 because it is being developed by private enterprise and not the government.

It is fortunate because it will be built by experts competing with one another and not the politicians.

Unfortunately, it will take some time before it is clear what, if any, government regulations will be needed to protect consumers living in a brave, new Web3 World.

Dr. Stewart A. Denenberg is an emeritus professor of computer science at Plattsburgh State, retiring recently after 30 years there. Before that, he worked as a technical writer, programmer and consultant to the U.S. Navy and private Industry. Send comments and suggestions to his blog at www.tec-soc.blogspot.com, where there is additional text and links. He can also be reached at denenbsa@gmail.com.