Gert Lovinka: "Web 3 is a really new beast"

The next text in the Kolota “Around Horizontal” project about the theory and practice of self-organization is devoted to attempts to decentralize the Internet, that is, its led from the power of large platforms under the almost monopoly control of several large corporations. These attempts, directly related to cryptote technology and blockchain, are already known as “Web 3.0”.

The well -known theorist of the media and the Internet, Dutchman Gert Lovink was one of those who have long shown what the dangers of the too centralized Internet are. Back in 2017, Kulta published an interview with Herth.

Now we asked him to tell what web 3.0 is, and, as it turned out from the conversation, Lovinka looks at new achievements quite skeptical and now talks about the need for the next step - Web 4.0.

For Kolta, one of the translators of the book “Critical Theory of the Internet” into Russian Mitya Lebedev spoke with a patch.

- Today the crisis of the network is just not recognized; We constantly hear the phrase “Internet”, and the influence and power of a handful of technological giants have long become the most important political problem. However, if the fact of centralization is evident, then an alternative conversation about decentralization, that is, the Web 3 discourse, as if it comes down to new dizrueptic technological tools for accumulating capital, or is it not? What are the roots of modern discourse about decentralization? Obviously, this idea pursues the Internet from the very beginning and takes various forms. What are its possible contradictions and nuances?

-To consider this issue, it is better to return in the 1960s and 1970s, when criticism of mass society, mass media, as well as concepts related to homogeneous social units like “people” and “class”, was popular. We can say that these large amorphous social units themselves began to inevitably decompose. In philosophy, for example, we remember the analysis of the difference in Jacques Derrida. Other researchers can call these trends social fragmentation or individualization of society. So when considering decentralization, we are talking about a long process, during which categories inherited from the XVIII and XIX centuries collapse.

At the same time, the idea of ​​the network is already developing at the technical level. In 1962, Paul Baran compiled and compared the schemes of three forms of networks: centralized, distributed and decentralized. In the chart of the ram, the process of fragmentation, as it were, receives its technical expression, this is the technological beginning of the idea of ​​decentralization.

Decentralization as a whole is a process, the word itself speaks of this, and this process began to subsequently differentiate. And while some critics, especially in Britain, said that the social struggle should be waged at the micro level with a kind of rhizomatic social units, on the other hand, it was obvious to everyone that such logic contributed to depolitization: fragmentation did not unite people as it should, and in the neoliberal world in the end everyone competed and fights each other. In the discourse of decentralization, there are always these dialectics and ambiguity.

- As a result, the Internet as a decentralized structure and especially the “World Wide Web” could look at the early stage a technical solution for the problem of fragmentation ...

- Yes, and at the design level, we received the hegemony of individualism - this time expressed in the user's figure: as unique individuals, we allegedly can take control and customize user experience.

-Is it possible to indicate any alternatives displaced at the dawn of the web?

- In Web 1.0 there was a lot of ideology precisely a technical nature. Today, 30 years later, we have the opposite situation: we have many technical capabilities, but, in fact, there are not many ideology. It is more about some affective states: fear, paranoia, loss of a sense of safety, disorientation, depression.

At first, the digital environment was exclusively mathematical: navigation was carried out mainly through UNIX commands, and everything was very textile and primitive. The ideology itself was mathematical - decentralization as such was hardly an ideological path. There were many technical components, and the “center” itself would be difficult to single out. But she did not work ideologically, that is, not because someone initially conceived the existence of so many distributed nodes. The “centers” could be considered users themselves in several countries, and in the early 1990s we are talking about about two to three million people compared to today's five billion.

Do not forget about the role of universities and scientific communities at the early stage of the existence of the Internet. And only later, in the 90s, with the spread of the web, the Wired and California ideology magazine and California ideology come to the forefront. At the very beginning, there was a clear separation of old media models with a broadcast from top to bottom into a large audience - and new rhizomatic media. And this division was important. And only subsequently the idea arises that the new environment can also be centralized.

-That is, if decentralization used to have objective technical bases, then today's Internet giants in the world Web 2.0 as the most maximum simply use rhetoric.

- Yes, but this rhetoric does not really work, it can no longer sell it.

- What is Web 3 in general, if in a nutshell?

- Web 3 is a really new beast. Web 2.0 was a period that began after the collapse of the Dotcomes, it was based on the user content: we saw the appearance of blogging, the heyday of YouTube , Google , social networks - and their Chinese analogues. Even despite the difference between Western and Chinese services, the latter follow similar logic - the same processes occur inside the firewall. So web 2.0 can not simply be reduced to the silicone valley. This is a global process - in Russia there is Yandex and VKontakte, for example. Each part of the world passes through this moment, which I would call user facilitation (simplifying user experience).

In this sense, Web 2.0 is not a variation of the broadcasting model of media, this is something completely different. He mobilizes the user desire - to involve, respond, like, etc. In all global contexts, in different countries, the user encounters different triggers involving him in the media.

Previously, everything really was different-partly due to the lack of sufficient functionality. In the 90s, we sent emails, entered chats, but in general, this cannot be compared with massive involvement today, a rampant gamification when you yourself are a game. For a long time nothing happened to this - we saw the formation of the capitalism of the platforms, the incredible processes of centralization, narrowing the system to the level of several platforms, and the growth of control and surveillance. At first, a simplification occurred, and then the growth of centralization and control.

But after the financial crisis of 2008 and the beginning of the recession, another process related to Web 3.0 began-the climbing of the crypt, the creation of a parallel payment system, is now direct, frank, and not indirect financialization and monetization of the network.

This was partly an answer to the old, but now the existing public agreement between companies and users: the user receives free services in exchange for data. It was a contract for Web 1.0 , and for Web 2.0 . Web 3 poses into question the idea of ​​this imaginary free (free) , it undermines this model, as if saying: we are not only actors, but also economic forces.

In Web 3.0, we do not just exchange information or enter into social relations: we understand that all this has the necessary financial side. Sometimes this economic exchange can occur consciously, and sometimes - to be automated. Subsequently, this kind of automation of cost exchange could be observed in DAOS . As soon as the economic exchange of actors rests on such a technical basis, we are deep in the territory of Web 3 .

- That is, what the figures like Gavin Wood , who is considered the founder of Web 3.0 , suggests, looks like further comprehension of social experience.

-I always compare blockchain with a large-scale Excel online version. Excel tables did not really change about 40 years, but the world is controlled with their help. The blockchain promises to make this rigid form of calculation simply more network and open.

We are talking about a new form of calculating the flows of data, social relations, relations between digital objects - all of them today are actually mixed (we cannot separate digital and social relations anymore?).

The idea is that all data flows, information, even our conversation-all this will pass through a decentralized blockchain system. Further, one of the layers of this system will be financial. Moreover, when we talk about the blockchain, we mean a very complex dynamic, constantly changing database, which seems to be a contradiction: how can the database be fluid? But for monetization and financialization of social, this is one of the requirements.

One of the main bases of the system inside the Web 3 is the ability to cut this flow into individual economic pieces and attributing them to the cost. The levels of calculation and exchange thus merge. So the blockchain is a new and more dynamic form of social administration.

Of course, in comparison with Web 2.0, there is still a certain step forward: so far the profit is obtained behind users through the operation of data, and Web 3 at least raises the economic issue directly. Another thing is that this decision is unsuccessful - and will create new systems of inequality. No one takes any measures against the concentration of capital in the hands of a small number of people. But so far we are at a too early stage and cannot recognize those players who will become “Facebooks” of cryptocurrencies.

Money generally always strives for centralization and concentration. This happens everywhere, including in Web 3 . And all supporters of the new decentralization immediately put forward a number of grounds for their idea, which, in turn, are again centralized: this applies to locations for mining cryptocurrencies, and organizing trading and data storage. Under the entire ideology of decentralization, there are many assumptions of centralization - they should be there as the conditions for the possibility of decentralized exchange.

In terms of self -organization, Web 3 cannot offer anything: at the maximum we can present very small communities on the new technical basis. What the ideologists themselves claim - all this, of course, is so, this is true, Web 3 is decentralized. But only at the level of self -presentation and direct experience. From the point of view, infrastructure is a pure lie.

- In this case, we have a blockchain, further economy of social relations - and the absence of even a hint of a public sphere.

- Yes, but it must be emphasized that this happens in response to the previous model, where all these processes proceeded behind people without their clear understanding of how the whole economy of digital advertising works.

- From hypocrisy - to cynicism.

- Yes, we have done such progress (laughs) . But we are just beginning to understand where the new economy is moving and how the new economy will work.

In general, criticism of bitcoins can be relatively simple, but the essence of Web 3 is more complicated. We can easily look down at the speculative nature of cryptocurrencies and talk about the new Ponzi schemes, but the economy and financialization of the network is a larger process than just speculation in cryptocurrencies. In relation to Web 2.0, we see a significant change in the paradigm.

These paradigms, old and new, are not so easy to reduce with each other: you can look at all this saga with the Libra Facebook cryptocurrency and see their incompatibility. Libra was an attempt to establish a kind of technical hegemony over e -commerce. But the idea was not fully thought out, and they were faced with many technical and regulatory problems. If Facebook were slightly smarter, he would introduce a decentralized system of payments on Instagram so that influensers could be involved directly in the process of commodity exchange. Then the monetization of this part of the business could be successful. In addition, of course, the regulators exerted great pressure on Facebook, but it is also clear that the introduction of a separate currency would destroy their business model. Because it is extremely difficult to combine the supervisory capitalism scheme based on free services and collecting and selling data, with decentralized monetization. These are two different value systems.

The promise of Web 3 is the economy of processes at a deeper level of protocols, so we will not just go to sites and buy something clicks. We are not talking here about some new interesting application created on top of the existing system. In general, we are talking about reprogramming the network, so Web 3 is a really successful term.

-Still, this is a rather gloomy script. Should then think about Web 4 ?

- Yes, definitely. Web 4 should be a response to the financialization of the network. It will be necessary to either radically reduce the purely financial installation of cryptotechnologies, when they are domesticated, trained, civilized and reintegrated into society. Or radically separate them from a new, unfortunate level of network experience, which partly means a return to the previous situation, when payment systems existed more autonomous from other social structures.

For example, you can imagine this situation: some things are public, some are simply free. We can talk freely, why do we need monetary mediation from Web 3 ?

One can imagine further that a public stack , or public infrastructure, subordinates a significant part of the network - this is a kind of technochabermas scenario. Thus, it will be possible to revise the relationship between political economy and the public sphere: at least we can distinguish between two spaces.

In the ideology of Web 3, this distinction simply does not. Web 4 should include public infrastructure and payment system. The idea that the public infrastructure should be a zone completely separated from the exchange sphere - of course, is also an ideological design. But the distinction should take place - otherwise everything will be financialized.

- What alternatives are already planned today? There is, for example, Solid Tim Berners-Lee-a project of a decentralized analogue of the World Wide Web with great attention to confidentiality and personal management.

- At least the debate should begin. There are only a number of concepts. For example, Benjamin Bratton and accelerationists as a whole emphasize large, multi -level, centralized platforms, that is, on the usual vertical structures - but subject to guarantees of public control and public possession of their infrastructure, another property system. The principle of centralization of services seems to be a good and inevitable process, since we are talking about large universal systems that reduce costs and increase reliability. But in general, all this is a bit like a repetition of the debate about the organization that followed the Russian revolution.

On the other hand, the opposite cliche can be found in criticism of acceleration and centralization - in the romantic concepts of small groups, decentralization, and trains. The communist and pastoral ideal emerges, which can take anarchist or nationalist forms.

It seems to me that here we see the struggle between the two cliche inherited from the past. If we are talking about the design of a new technical system, especially one that can be useful for global challenges like global warming, then you can not rely on these outdated ideas. How to overcome this dichotomy? We need a third way - between centralized platforms and decentralized networks. But we need some tangible prototypes: of course, we start with conceptualization, but working models are required.