Our brains are engines of reality-creation. Our realities are shaped by the translation of millions of bits of information through our senses and the unconscious, subconscious, and conscious parts of our minds.
The information age is an age of databases that we spend parts of our lives in through expression and interaction. Many of the databases we populate are worlds of their own. They consist of identities and the products of imagination. Decades ago, internet forums were already worlds you could step into, but when modern social media came around, these databases were expanded vastly, making the virtual worlds of before look more like a lobby than a vast realm of landscapes and experiences you’ll never be able to explore in just one lifetime (just consider the 500+ hours of content added to YouTube alone, every minute).
Distinctive of these virtual realms is that they can serve as a layer for the IRL world we cannot plug out of. Google Maps provides a world you can explore, but also an information layer that perfectly overlays with our IRL experience. The same goes for anything that creates context for the IRL: social profiles, geotagged material, articles about places & phenomena, databases of products & their prices, etc. If I were to try to keep up with the rapid addition of new layers and create an exhaustive list, this article would probably never be published. Especially not with AI entering our world of worlds.
Databases are imagination layers. They’re records of decisions or interpretations. And the most important ones are owned by corporations, rather than by the people whose imaginations populate these worlds.
Anyone who has dabbled in crypto for a while will know that different blockchains provide different worlds — more commonly referred to as ‘ecosystems’. There are different people and entities creating the data, the decentralized apps (dApps) that interact with this data are different, and the products of imagination you find on these chains will differ. Blockchains, too, have layers. A base layer may be Ethereum, and then the ‘layer 2’ will create more specific worlds and ecosystems that all interact with that primary world, all centered around the same energy that provides life to all. It’s like traveling through a star system.
Galaxies from before have become dominated by corporate monopolists, often run by ‘Strong Man’ leaders. They are not elected, but appointed by boards of people that have acquired a financial stake in this corporate galaxy. Many of these people will have made 0 contribution to the actual worlds within that galaxy, yet they extract, profit, and get to make decisions about all these worlds.
The reason so many people believe in blockchain as a technology, is because of the democratization potential it has for the database-layer of our existence. But since so much of our existence is tied to databases, one can drop the middle part: the democratization potential it has for the database-layer of our existence.
In most of those blockchain-based worlds, cryptocurrency exists as a way to measure people’s stake in those worlds. Is it flawless? No. Does it create the most democratic outcomes? Certainly not always. But the model does introduce the ability for anyone with a stake to participate democratically. It creates incentives for open data models that distribute power, rather than data monopolies which concentrate power.
It’s not about money, it’s not about NFTs as a subculture, it’s not about speculating on tokens. It’s about creating a better internet.
The internet is such a big part of our existence; it’s ridiculous to leave it solely in the hands of megacorporations. It belongs in the hands of everyone contributing to it. The world is ours.