Welcome to the Third Connected Age: The Future of the Internet

October 29 1969 At 1030 pm a computer grad student named Charley Kline at UCLA sent a message to SRI Stanford Research Institute It was the first connection between computer networksWe set up a telephone connection between us and the guys at SRIamp8230We typed the L and we asked on the phoneamp8220Do you see the Lamp8221quotYes we see the Lamp8221 came the responseWe typed the O and we asked amp8220Do you see the Oamp8221quotYes we see the Oamp8221Then we typed the G and the system crashedamp8230Yet a revolution had begun amp8230January 1 1983 This day is considered the official birthday of the Internet Prior to this the various computer networks did not have a standard way to communicate with each other A new communications protocol was established called Transfer Control ProtocolInternetwork Protocol TCPIP This allowed different kinds of computers on different networks to quottalkquot to each other ARPANET and the Defense Data Network officially changed to the TCPIP standard on January 1 1983 hence the birth of the Internet All networks could now be connected by a universal languageAugust 6 1991 Tim BernersLee published the first ever website while working at CERN the huge particle physics lab in SwitzerlandAugust 30 1993 CERN puts the World Wide Web software in the public domain Later CERN made a release available with an open license a surer way to maximize its disseminationUntil 1993 the Internet and its predecessors like ARPANET were difficult and highly limited in their useBeginning in 1993 due to CERNamp8217s decision to make the World Wide Web software available to all with an open license we entered The First Connected Age when the world began its 30year migration into cyberspaceThe Three Connected AgesIn 1993 with the advent of the World Wide Web we entered The First Connected Age where we connected to discover and connected to transact This is today known as Search and eCommerce which are forces that have given rise to companies like Amazon and GoogleIn 2007 we entered The Second Connected Age which built on and did not replace The First Connected Age when we were connected all the time connected to everybody and connected to entertainment due to smart phones social networks and affordable and pervasive broadband These three advances which we call Social Mobile and Streaming have reordered society politics and culture while creating juggernauts like Apple Facebook and Netflix but also enabling everything from Uber to Airbnb to Dollar Shave Club to SpotifyThe world we live in today is hard to describe to someone thirty years ago But we haven39t seen anything yet Four new forms of connection will reorder society work and the future much more in the next decade than the past three decadesThese are the four new connections that will drive The Third Connected AgeData connected to data which is machine learning the form of AI that is most scaledMuch faster and resilient forms of connection via 5GNew ways of connecting including Voice Augmented Reality and Virtual RealityNew Trust Connection built on the BlockchainWeb 3 Metaverse Tokens and DAOs are connected but not the sameThe entire world of Web 3 Metaverse TokensWallets and DAOs all of which are different from each other but connected to each other are just one subset of all the changes underway in The Third ConnectedAgeWeb 3 is as much an ideology as it is a set of technologies The central tenets of Web 3 are Open Decentralized and Composable And a belief that the creators builders and users should have as much ownership and benefits as investors and companiesTokens NFTs or NonFungible Tokens are one type of many different types of tokens including Governance Security and DeFi tokens Tokens are often stored in wallets and this combination of tokens and wallets will help orchestrate ownership and value exchangeMetaverse is a term that includes both Augmented Reality AR and Virtual Reality VR Augmented Reality layers the digital onto the physical think of a headsup display in a car while Virtual Reality creates a simulacrum of the physical world in digital space Just like Windows and MacOS were the operating systems of The First Connected Age and joined by iOS and Android in The Second Connected Age billions being spent by Apple Meta Microsoft and others to create both hardware and software to operate between the physical and various manifestation of the digital world of The Third Connected AgeDAOs are missiondriven communities with a treasury of tokens that enable ownership governance and financial benefits that ideally will bring about a more transparent autonomous efficient and anonymous form of governance It is the way the new world might be organizedWeb 3The Internet was first designed to be decentralized enough to withstand a nuclear strike By providing a free license to the World Wide Web CERN engendered a belief in openness Composability accelerates innovation by enabling developers to build new usecases on top of existing projects The code of that new project in turn serves as yet another building block for someone else leading to an everexpanding library of code that developers can tap into to build their own ideas Venture capitalist Chris Dixon described it aptly when he wrote quotComposability is the ability to mix and match software components like Lego bricksquotWhile all of us have benefited from the Internet a significant part of the upside has gone to investors and some businesses but builders and particularly creators and users have shared very little of the wealth their content their data their networks their attention and time have enabled Think of all the content data and time you give to Facebook Zuckerberg buys islands in Hawaii and you get to connect with other people and get likesThe ideology of Web 3 is aligned with what most people want which is to be recognized and rewarded without being charged rents of 30 to 70 percent for the benefits of using a platformThere will be middlemen and women in this new world Consider them quotenablersquot who will make it easy for us to use the new technologies to be discovered or provide other services but they are likely to charge a tenth of the total value created versus taking the large slices of today39s quotaggregatorsquotTokensWalletsToday most of the talk about tokens pertains to one type of token which is the NFT But there are many other types of tokens A way to think of tokens is that they provide some combination of four utilities currency status membership and governance rightsAn analogy to tokens that we may all be familiar with are airline miles If you fly a lot you get rewarded with airline miles which you can use as a currency When you fly a lot this currency gets you the status of a higher level and provides membership into lounges and clubs and the airlines pay more attention to what you think about how they govern themselves Most tokens are like airline miles where one person39s airline mile on American is the same as another person39s airline mile on American Most tokens operate like thisNonFungible tokens on the other hand add a form of uniqueness in that each one is different from every other one amp8230 and thus NFTs have been particularly popular with artist and creative communities NFTs are significantly improving the rewards to people who create and their fans versus the platformsTokens are usually collected and operated using wallets like Metamask Increasingly many Web3 initiatives have a person signing in with their wallets and not their Facebook or Apple identities or their emailThink of tokens and wallets as the future of identity and CRM Customer Relationship Management if you are a business leader or a marketer This new age is dawningMetaverseIn one way the Metaverse is here in the Web 20 world and it is called gaming Gaming is a 155billion industry bigger than TV movies and music combined and is seen as the gateway to the next generation of Virtual Reality It is why Microsoft is willing to pay 67 billion for Activision Blizzard and both Disney and Comcast were rumored to be interested in Electronic Arts Netflix is likely to regret that it did not leverage its once valuable stock to buy a major platform like Sony bought BungeeSkeptics may snort quotin your dreamsquot amp8230 and the answer to that is that 148 million people are dreamingThese are the sales to date of Meta39s Oculus Quest 2 Try one if you can39t afford one get the 30 one Now imagine the technology getting exponentially better and possibly cheaper as the next generation from Meta and the products that Apple and Microsoft have in development are released by early 2024 if not beforeTerry Kawaja founder of leading digital investment bank Luma Partners shared an insight that given the VRAR nature of the Metaverse we may first experience elements of it at scale in automobiles Step into a modern car particularly an electric one and you are in a world of screens with AR and Voice already deeply linked to its functionalityIt is not just technology but the underlying human need that these new technologies will enable that makes one believe of their future potentialFirst humans want to have Godlike powerThe companies that enable us to cross distance and time such as Google amp160which allows us to find anything with Search or visit places with Google Earth or Apple which allows us to connect everywhere projecting our images and videos or Meta which enables us to connect for free or Amazon which brings the worlds39 bazaars to us have become the most valuable companies in the worldAt one time it was the railroad companies and oil companies and telephone companies that allowed us to bridge distance and time Pharmaceutical and medical companies allow us to live longer livesThese new Third Connected Age technologies will give us amazing powers We will gravitate towards them just as we have in the pastSecond they allow us to have multiple identitiesOur minds are imagination machines and they far outstrip the physical limitations of our bodies Avatars and virtual worlds allow us to constantly reinvent ourselves quottry onquot new lives and live in multiple worldsThird we are about to see the greatest unleashing ever of human creativityThis will happen as more and more people gain access to new ways to express themselves to project their presence and be rewarded for their workThe SignalThe NoiseThere are many people who believe that the Web3TokenMetaverseDAO ecosystem is a combination of BS a Ponzi scheme promoted by a collection of hucksters scammers and the delusionfilled who are high on their own gas and maybe other substancesCheck out Molly White39s site which compiles many of these examples Watch Dan Olson39s quotThe Line Goes Upquot video a brilliant take down of NFTs Read Scott Galloway Monitor the headlines of Celsius and other companies going into bankruptcy Measure the plunge in engagement of NFT markets or speak to anybody who invested in crypto for the first time beginning nine months agoThe bubble has burst Fake Big balls of BS No practical use or problem solved An uncertain set of technologies in search of problems that do not existMaybeThere were and probably will still be many Ponzi schemes Much of what is called Web3 can be done without tokens block chain or any of the newfangled stuff The Oculus Quest 2 while impressive is still rudimentary Most coins will be and should always have been worthlessBut amp8230Remember 2000 to 2002 when the Nasdaq crashed from 5048 to 1114That was the noiseInternet usage almost doubled from one third of all households to two thirds of households during the 19992003 period with massive increases in broadband connectionsThat was the signalThe crashing prices of crypto and NFTs and the revealing of scam artists is the noiseBe smart Read about all the stuff that is going wrong Be waryBut learn by getting involved at minimum as an individual a lot of future opportunities are likely to be available to people who are conversant with the new landscape and ideally as a company organizations and people tend to adjust slower than technology so it39s not too early to begin to build centers of excellence and explore partnerships You may see some signals that reveal the amazing potential of what is nextThis signal maybe discerned in the hundreds of billions of dollars companies like Microsoft Apple and Meta are investing in the space even today Or the 45 billion A16Z raised for their oversubscribed Crypto FundThe facts are theseThe best talent from the highestrated universities is going to Web3 companies even this year in the middle of what looks like a meltdownA spectrum of musicians from Nas to Chainsmokers have embraced the new world at Royalio while Tom Brady Tiger Woods Wayne Gretzky and others have done the same at AutographioMany marketers are trying to understand the opportunities and challenges of tokens and wallets for the future of identity and CRM programsCompanies like Nike recently have bought RTFKT and filed for several patents in Third Connected Age technologiesLeaders everywhere are working to rethink their businesses As an example insurance companies are wondering how to underwrite NFT losses or the purchase of Virtual LandThere are a lot of signs that this period is like 1993 and 2007 which marked The First and Second Connected ages respectively They changed business and society creating new opportunities and threatsWe are at the early days of what is likely to be the most compelling decade or more on the InternetWelcome to The Third Connected Age The Future of the InternetClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Welcome to the Third Connected Age: The Future of the Internet

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Rishad Tobaccowala

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Welcome to the Third Connected Age: The Future of the Internet

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