Web3 Driven Shift In Socio-Politics and Culture
Joseph Beuys, once said that only individual creativity could transform society. He believed that unlocking the creative potential of every individual is the only revolutionary force that can protect society from the negative consequences of pure profit-oriented capitalism. When he said that “everyone is an artist,” he meant that everyone can apply artistic practices, whether it be at work, home, or any other everyday context. Thanks to decentralized Web3 technologies, his vision is now being realized in the new creator economy in which people can create, own, transfer, and trade any kind of digital assets, without the need for intermediaries.
The decentralization of technologies brings to mind Octavia Paz’s book about Marcel Duchamp. The book beautifully explains how a ready-made neutral object loses its meaning and usefulness, gives up, gains indifference, and becomes free when located in a museum or gallery space. This is regarded as a step towards the serenity of wisdom rather than an artistic movement for the object. Such speculative thinking brings new perspectives with which to reconsider the definition of liberation in the digital age. While decentralizing technologies from the deterministic working logic of classical rule-based algorithms via AI, and while liberating business models from the limits of intermediaries via blockchain, we also raise an important awareness about ourselves. We realize how we are limited by the deterministic influence of centralized economic models and conventional thinking patterns. Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Albert Camus, and other existentialist philosophers insistently emphasized that a meaningful life full of creativity can only be achieved by overcoming the passive state of perception in the face of others.
The new creator economy empowered by Web3 brings an immutable, censorship-resistant, permission-free, trustless, and user-defined/owned internet with no influence of intermediaries and minimum control of traditional institutions. This technology-driven, socio-political, and cultural shift encourages us to set out on a voyage to build a better and freer world in a single, 3D, electromagnetic universe that unifies the physical universe of atoms and the digital universe of pixels.