One problem is that if all the engineers are devoted to web3 nonsense, who is working on the real stuff? I know it’s not a zero sum game but at the same time we only have limited resources, and at a country-level scale the corporations interested in web3 employ a lot of engineers, at a scale where whatever FAANG is doing, the rest of the world is keen on doing.
I guess what I’m saying is web3 being terrible, scammy, and useless don’t strike me as reasons why it won’t supplant the web as it exists today. It could just win through attrition, as everyone interested in keeping the current web going retires and dies, as there’s no money in maintaining old systems; while those making fortunes off web3 scams are massively incentivized to keep the scam money flowing.
> One problem is that if all the engineers are devoted to web3 nonsense, who is working on the real stuff?
Very few engineers are working on web3 nonsense.
> and at a country-level scale the corporations interested in web3 employ a lot of engineers
They're really not. Like, if you're defining "interested in web3" as "they have occasionally said the word 'blockchain' in an attempt to get some press", yeah, sure. But not that many large companies are actually putting significant resources into this. Of the really big tech companies... maybe Facebook is putting substantial resources into it, or has in the past? Though surely not a significant part of their total resources. The others, not at all, really.
I’m mostly forecasting in my comment based on what I’ve seen happen to the current industry. It’s completely centered around nonsense like “engagement”, and because there’s so much money involved it impacts the direction of the industry all the way down to education of school children.
We have students today who have no idea what a blockchain is, but they know they can make a fat salary working on it, and that’s enough for them to devote their career to the idea. They come to school demanding courses in blockchain, and so blockchain 101 is born. Then you need professors to teach it so you hire the blockchain researchers funded by Facebook, because they’re the experts. Next you have blockchain publications and conferences (it’s already started). Pretty soon the nsf starts funding blockchain research at the government level and your tax dollars are hard at work doing Facebook’s research for them.
Before you know, at a country-level you have devoted countless man hours and research dollars toward something no one except Facebook really wanted in the first place. That’s the way I see it going.
There are a lot of steps in the chain between what we have now and the end state you're afraid of, and none of them are certain. Maybe students don't believe they can make a fat salary working on blockchain technology. Maybe they're not successful convincing schools to offer courses in blockchain tech. Maybe Facebook researchers don't get hired by universities, and maybe academic research into blockchain tech doesn't take off in a big way. Maybe the NSF doesn't see the need to start funding blockchain research.
I can't tell the future, but given the current trajectory (like the recent big crash) I see at least a decent probability that web3 goes absolutely nowhere.
To be clear, I’m observing these things first hand as a professor. Students are asking about blockchain at info sessions more than any other tech. Many students see CS education as a fast track to blockchain tech, coins, and nfts they’ve been hearing turning people into millionaires overnight. That’s what they are interested in!
Parents want to know what blockchain classes we offer. And in fact we do have blockchain 101 and a single faculty member in the space, but there is a lot of pressure from market forces (influenced heavily by FAANG) to hire more.
Fair enough. I’ve been out of college for almost a decade, so I’m out of the loop with respect to what students want. I do suspect that unless crypto bounces back relatively soon some of that desire will go away.
Eh, there've been technology fads before; they sometimes make it into universities, but rarely further. When I was in college, XML databases were very much the thing, and there was a whole optional course on them (which I didn't do). You don't hear much about XML databases these days.
(I think a couple of years before this, it would have been CORBA).
I'm sorry but you do not get to arbitrate what engineers enjoy and choose to work on, whether that is web3 or something completely different.
This authoritarian approach justified "for the good of humanity" is dangerous. It actually makes me sad this comment is on "Hacker News". We should value tinkering and hacking on what we enjoy.
We shouldn't value net-negative tinkering, which is what pyramids and pump-and dumps are, so I would say that these engineers are mostly making the world a worse place.
However, I don't think most of the work that goes into internet companies at the moment necessarily makes the world a better place, either.
and this gets at what's really threatening about web3: it's an inherently libertarian technology and authoritarians on both the left and right of the cultural/political spectrum are terrified by that.
It's libertarian in the sense that the final stage of libertarianism is that the well-connected insiders get to abuse everyone else, with zero recourse against them.
In this sense, Web3 is a tremendous success of libertarian thought. No rules, no laws, and an absolute honeypot for hustlers, thieves, and fraudsters. Anonymous founders running off with the money, repeat fraudsters pulling off bigger and bigger heists, and money being poured into the dumbest schemes which, inevitably, end poorly.
I can't think of a better condemnation of libertarianism.
> How many people do you know working on real things?
Pretty much everyone I know working in industry is working on imaginary things like increasing engagement and aggregating data. They are doing this because FAANG want them to, not because this is critical work that needs to be done for society.
For what it's worth, I do think this is (or was) a problem. For awhile late last year and early this year a large proportion of the people I saw leaving my big tech company were going into blockchain stuff.
I suspect the current correction will put an end to that though, which I must say seems like a good thing.
I guess what I’m saying is web3 being terrible, scammy, and useless don’t strike me as reasons why it won’t supplant the web as it exists today. It could just win through attrition, as everyone interested in keeping the current web going retires and dies, as there’s no money in maintaining old systems; while those making fortunes off web3 scams are massively incentivized to keep the scam money flowing.