Open Conversations: Reclaiming the Internet as a Public Square (Wendy Hanamura)
Funding the Commons Open Conversations · 3:04
Wendy Hanamura of the Internet Archive describes the values of the decentralized web movement: a web that is private, secure and still fun, and a public square rather than only a marketplace that treats people as a commodity. She traces the movement to about 2015, when major foundations asked the founder of the Internet Archive for a moonshot, and defines it as a set of technologies including decentralized storage, transport and identity, with some adding decentralized governance. She also argues that Ethereum and others in blockchain are driven by more than money and that a decentralized movement pushes power to the edges.
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From Funding the Commons Open Conversations, hosted by Funding the Commons.
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[Music] I can tell you about the values of the D web movement. We believe that we deserve a web that is private, a web that is secure, a web that's still fun, a web that creates a place that is not just a marketplace, but also a public square, a web that doesn't use us as a commodity. All of this is certainly technologically attainable and it's something that people need to demand and certainly that people deserve. I'm Wendy Hanamura and I am one of the core organizers of the the web movement. It's a global movement that brings builders and dreamers and others together to build what we need, the web
that we deserve. You know, for us, it all started about 2015 when the five largest foundations asked the founder of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kale, my boss, to give a moonshot for the internet. They were going to pull a lot of money together and grant this next big push for our internet. He got on stage and talked about something really new. He saw these nent technologies, peer-to-peer technologies that he thought could be brought together and formulated to create what some people call web 3. It's much larger than blockchain and it's certainly much larger than crypto.
It's a series of technologies, decentralized storage, decentralized transport layer, decentralized identity. Some people will even go high up the stack and say it requires a decentralized governance. That's what taken as a whole we think of as the decentralized web. Well, I'll tell you a little story. When it was announced that Wendy Hanamura of the Internet Archive was interviewing Ayam Yaguchi of Ethereum, there were a lot of trolls that came out and said, "Oh, so now the Internet Archive is in bed with crypto." Our social media person reached out to me and said, "Do you want me to counter that?" And I said, "No, absolutely not."
Because if you do not know anything more about the crypto landscape or the blockchain landscape to think that Ethereum is synonymous with everything else out there, then you're just a fool. Quite frankly, Ethereum and others within the blockchain space are driven by more than money. They're certainly driven by more than speculation. They're driven by a desire to build something better. That's what unites us really, our shared vision that we have a lot of problems in this world, but that we can build something [Music] better. The interesting thing about building a decentralized movement is that it's not about who's at the center, who's in control. It's about pushing
power and support to every edge of your community. [Music]