Expansive and extractive networks of Web3

The self-proclaimed usurper of Web 2.0, Web3 quickly became the center of attention. Not long ago, the public discourse was saturated with projects, promises, and peculiarities of Web3. Now the spotlight has swung around to focus on the many faults, failures, and frauds of Web3. The cycles of techno...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBig data & society Vol. 10; no. 1; p. 205395172311596
Main Authors Sadowski, Jathan, Beegle, Kaitlin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.01.2023
Sage Publications Ltd
SAGE Publishing
Subjects
Capitalism
Case studies
Decentralization
Technological change
Web 2.0
political economy
venture capital
decentralization
blockchain
Web3
fictitious capital
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Summary:The self-proclaimed usurper of Web 2.0, Web3 quickly became the center of attention. Not long ago, the public discourse was saturated with projects, promises, and peculiarities of Web3. Now the spotlight has swung around to focus on the many faults, failures, and frauds of Web3. The cycles of technological trends and investment bubbles seem to be accelerating in such a way as to escape any attempt at observing them in motion before they crash, and then everybody moves on to the next thing. Importantly, Web3 was not an anomaly or curiosity in the broader tech industry. It articulates patterns that existed before Web3 and will exist after. Web3 should be understood as a case study of innovation within the dominant model of Silicon Valley venture capitalism. Our focus in this article is on understanding how the movement around Web3 formed through an interplay between (1) normative concepts and contestations related to ideas of “decentralization” and (2) political economic interests and operations related to the dynamics of fictitious capital. By offering a critical analysis of Web3, our goal is also to show how any even potentially progressive (or as we call them “expansive”) forms of Web3 development struggle for success, recognition, and attention due to the wild excesses of hype and investment devoted to “extractive” forms of Web3. In the process, they provide us a better view of how different arrangements of technopolitics can exist at the same time, side-by-side, in complicated ways.
ISSN:2053-9517
2053-9517
DOI:10.1177/20539517231159629