Conversation

I think the Great Weirding has finally hit the tech stack. Everything I'm seeing happening to the consumer web experience seems in some way a response to the huge stress test the web 2.0 tech stack endured in 2015-18 due to major pattern failures
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The cultural trend I tagged as domestic cozy is now turning into a tech trend. This is the real Web 3.0 taking shape. SemWeb was a false start, blockchain was an Amara's Law candidate for 3.0 (ie we expected too much too soon) that won't actually happen till 2030+
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I don't know what to call this happening-for-real web 3.0 world, but the elements seem to be: 1. encrypted messaging as base layer 2. JAMstack 3. Graph databases 4. "Tunnel" like UX patterns (threads etc) with an underground vibe 5. Serious attempts to level up hypertext itself
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Things that belong in Web 3.0: all the encrypted messengers, Slack, TikTok, gatsby, Roam, notion,... what else?
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Things I think are being "retired" by the Web 3.0 blade runners: PHP/LAMP stack, WordPress, likely old-UX facebook (pre outcome of pivot to encrypted/group-based they're trying now) Kudos to twitter for being one of the few things that seems to be leaping across the 2-3 gap
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Mastodon is a ??? in my head. It's a blend of this 3.0 stuff, plus elements that look like they're from the distant blockchainy future 10 years out
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Replying to
I agree that the blockchain web3 isn't here yet, but I don't think the other trends / products you've noted are big enough to warrant a major version number. We're still in the web 2.0 business cycle, and I don't think web3 will truly emerge until after web 2.0 bubble bursts
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I think there might be a "big deskilling" during a web 2.0 crash, when engineers working at JAMstack + encrypted messaging startups have to learn PHP or C# and deal with the business realities of a corp like an EMR vendor or even Slack (which built on LAMP)
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The employees of Tumblr that now work for Automattic (WordPress) are getting a taste of this now. I think a lot of people won't be able to deal with this de-skill and de-prestige and stop working on the web.
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otoh it's the oldest story in tech... java people were complaining about this 12y ago... they end up having a market for their skills, but just lose their prestige, and have to play second fiddle to new kids in town as the stack churns through the change
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I think what I'm proposing is that things might actually "go backwards" for the first time, that the web might become more conservative, more WordPress-y, etc, due to a combination of business pressure and the "failures" of the era. And in reality this will be progress
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