#75 | The new public of web3
“In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.” —Noam Chomsky
"…any mistake, any untoward event, can draw a networked public into the streets, calling for blood. This is the situation today for authoritarian governments and liberal democracies alike." —Martin Gurri
A trustless world is emerging from crypto. This world will change how you and I work together, save for retirement, pay for the news, vote in elections and express ourselves. As relationships are codified in smart contracts and recorded indisputably on an omniscient ledger, we join a new public; a public that is unlike its ancestors.
We are each a member of many publics. Each one is a network of relationships and transactions among acquaintances, friends, families, colleagues and citizens. Today, many of these relationships are online. For the first time, therefore, these publics stretch not only between Hastings and Hull, but span Nairobi and Newcastle (via Buenos Aries).
Having spent the last few weeks submersed in the crypto community Kernel, I'm struck by the diverse, international, and open nature of the movement that is a new web3 'public'. This
new public is unique.
Truly international public movements (led by people, happening across borders spanning continents) are rare in human history. At first, with the proliferation of the internet, and now with web3, new publics dominate national discourse; they are uncontainable and impossible to understand by conventional states. Of course, economic crises and wars have existed, but, as Martin Gurri writes:
'…2011 marked the moment when the public first equalised the asymmetry in power with government. It [the public] did so by deploying digital tools to mobilise opinion and organise massive street protests. I also believe 2011 first exposed the gulf of distrust between the public and elected governments in many democratic countries.'
I remember flying out to Egypt during the Arab Spring in 2011 and holding in my then 16-year old hands a copy of the Economist describing the chaos of revolution in Cairo. Twitter and technology like it enabled the revolutions that tore through the Arab world. Critically, this technology allowed similar events to spark from country to country because the revolting public was, in a new way, international, not local and state-bound. To understand the implication of this, we must first
understand the public.
John Dewey, the philosopher who wrote The Public and its Problems, published in 1927, identifies a public as
‘those who are affected by the indirect consequences of a transaction to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have those consequences systematically cared for.’
Put differently, every human action has an impact, and when that impact is perceived, it ceases being purely private, but it has some external effect. (This only needs to be perceived, rather than actually having an external impact). In some cases, a new public forms in response to this perception.
Dewey says a public develops if people are first affected by something, then become aware of it, and finally relate themselves to one another and are aware of these new relationships. For example, I am often impacted by minor externalities, which I ignore. With chewing gum spat on the street, I am rarely aware of it, nor do I identify my plight with other sufferers who step on it. Therefore, I am not a member of this 'public' (if one exists). Nevertheless, I am a member of others.
As I grow older, or if I move country, what's important to me and who I relate to changes. I will move from some publics to others. Some will remain. Per The Sovereign Individual, we are entering the age of the individual, which means the publics we are a part of are more dynamic and perhaps more likely to change.
These publics sit adjacent to state institutions (as if guarded). These institutions have a fixed nature, and they are symbiotic to the publics they govern and control. Critically, the
publics inadvertently create the nation-state.
As we've said, and according to Dewey, a public forms by recognising itself around an issue. When a consortium of publics develop, sometimes they can't exist in equilibrium or securely. Therefore, state infrastructure appears: it's a reactive phenomenon. Yet, the development of the state in response to publics then curtails the successful operation, and development, of the very state that's arisen. From Crypto-Politics by Linda Monsees:
"The existence of solidified structures is the core problem for a well-functioning democracy, for they will never be able to capture new problems and new publics. Importantly, … the reason for this is the societal change caused by technological developments. New issues emerge, and demand new publics as the environment alters. …. [T]echnological change will always require constant adaptation on the part of political and societal institutions."
The dynamics of publics defining states and then technology redefining publics that (now) exist beyond states is, therefore, the flaw in today's system. It's why democracy feels like it's on the brink of collapse because technology is redefining the very publics that are governed by the entrenched state. This logical loop means (Monsees again) "[b]ecause of technological change and the global nature of many problems, traditional institutions of liberal democracy are unable to
respond to new problems."
Since 2011 the emergence of a new participatory economy and international system of web3 creates new publics that don't (even vaguely) fit within the old system. The powers of taxation and governance, and even security and money, are still broadly monopolies of the state. Yet, powers are evaporating into the dynamic world of web3, borderless and ungovernable; companies are now tokens and private keys, not armies, guard assets.
The new public, the one Kernel revealed to me, is international-first; it's digitally native and lives and works from anywhere. It's unique and uniquely challenging to the stiff states that support it. Its location is irrelevant; its politics are neither red nor blue or left nor right, but a new recipe that's yet undefined. This dynamism will strain and re-shape institutions built for other publics with old technology. Governments are on a razor's edge.
My week in books
Crypto-Politics by Linda Monsees. I bought it for the title, and it's about cryptography rather than web3 (unexpected lol). Nevertheless, it was illuminating and quite brilliant. More academic study than a novella, it's worth tearing through if you're interested in the social significance of cryptography. Link.
De-Fi and the Future of Finance by Ashwin Ramachandran and others. This was very hard to read. I was lost dozens of times as we explored the intricacies of the Uniswap protocol and impermanent loss, and so on... Interesting, but there are easier places to start. Link.
Live well,
Hector