Artificial scarcity is the aspect of web3 that bothers me most.
The web is all about abundance; reducing the marginal cost of software and information to zero so as many people as possible can have access. It seems like web3 advocates seek to do the opposite and lock software and information inside the digital equivalent of diamond mines.
DHH has written about abundance as part of his approach to Rails, https://world.hey.com/dhh/i-won-t-let-you-pay-me-for-my-open...
The “Post-scarcity economy” article on Wikipedia lists a number of references, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy
Generally, computing trends toward abundance. Computers are priced about the same, but do more each generation.
The reason this distinction is important is because a lot of folks try to make the case that the ideological origins of computer networking were with an eye toward post-scarcity, but this seems incorrect to me. Instead it seems to be ideological anger that the internet is not supporting post-scarcity economics.
> “The World Wide Web turns 25 next year. We have come a long way, but we must all continue to push for these various forms of openness in the appropriate places. Only then can we ensure that the Web is for everyone.”
While his essay doesn’t use the words “abundance” or “post-scarcity”, it gets pretty close. My guess is that the guy who gave the Internet away for free probably approaches technology from an abundance perspective.
> “…but this seems incorrect to me.”
I’m curious what has led you to the opinion these people are wrong? I’m interested to know about histories of the web that reflect a philosophy of scarcity.
Thanks for that essay. I actually didn't see anything that got close to post scarcity. The only point that seemed to touch on it was the point about Open Access but it seemed to be closely scoped to academic work.
> My guess is that the guy who gave the Internet away for free probably approaches technology from an abundance perspective.
Maybe? Giving things away for free doesn't lead to a post-scarcity mindset. Not every person that donated to charity or volunteers with their time thinks the world can get there either.
> I’m curious what has led you to the opinion these people are wrong? I’m interested to know about histories of the web that reflect a philosophy of scarcity.
It's hard because a "philosophy of scarcity" is pretty ill-defined. As early as 2016 [1] Berners-Lee was pushing the W3C to standardize web payments. And HTTP status code 402 Payment Required was in the HTTP spec since at least RFC 2068 [2] in 1997. So at least since then someone thought that the internet would be used to facilitate payment.
But that's enough uncertainty for me to comfortably say that the internet was not designed for (or even against) post scarcity in mind. Therefore there's no ideological connection between post-scarcity and the net or the web.
[1]: https://www.w3.org/blog/wpwg/2016/12/16/web-payments-tractio...
Some items, like tickets to the World Cup, are scarce. A payments API/protocol allows scarce items to be sold online. Presence of the API/protocol doesn’t prevent simultaneous distribution of abundant items online, or imply creators of the web are anything but pragmatic. Even the Free Software Foundation is pragmatic about people charging a fee for GPL software (e.g. sell a DVD with the software), as long as the GPL licensed source code is included. FSF hopes you’ll give away the DVD, but understands if you choose not to.
It seems like the idea that people are working toward abundance really bothers you. How come?
Oh I'm not saying folks cannot aspire toward abundance. I'm only saying that the technology didn't have abundance in mind when creating the net or the web.
> It seems like the idea that people are working toward abundance really bothers you. How come?
I'm not against that at all. A lot of arguments against Blockchain technologies seem to be that "the web used to be about abundance and Blockchain tech is against that so it's against the idea of the web as a whole." It's an argument designed around a narrative of a rug pull (e.g. it used to be abundant and now it's not) as opposed to a more realistic narrative that "we wish to bring the web to an abundance state and Blockchain technologies don't share that wish" which is an accurate but much more mild claim. I just want it to be clear that there was no solid historical basis for abundance in computer networking so that activists do not change history for stronger claims and that such claims (for or against abundance mind you) are ideologically motivated.