Framing the Future to Change the Future
Why we’re hosting a symposium on the future of the web to solve global challenges, and why you should come along
👇 Register interest here 👇
The world wide web started with a grand vision
Tim Berners-Lee famously said this about the web when it was first invented in 1991.
It started with a grand, utopian vision to connect people and share information freely and transparently — steeped in values of decentralisation, non-discrimination, bottom-up design, universality, and consensus. (see History of the Web from the Web Foundation)
Then Web2.0 came along. And things didn’t quite play out the way Sir Tim imagined.
We spend around 6 billion hours a day (ref) on social media, and our lives are mediated through 5 of the biggest companies on the planet: Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta in the west. Alongside this, competing worldviews are giving rise to what digital experts refer to as the ‘splinternet’ (read more here), where many internets now exist, with varying levels of access and openness.
Now Web3 is emerging as the next big thing
Today, the collection of technologies that are commonly referred to as Web3 is starting to become an important part of the innovation landscape, and the web as we have known it is evolving rapidly.
El Salvador recently made Bitcoin legal tender, at the same time as China has made crypto fundraising a criminal offence, and Cameroonian artists are staging NFT exhibitions at the Venice Biennale.
The award-winning Frontier Technologies Hub, funded by FCDO, thinks now is the time to consider where this new frontier might take us and what that means for critical global challenges: both the new solutions that emerge and the risks that come along with them.
To do this we have commissioned a study to speculate on the potential futures that might arise from the trends we’re seeing today.
- Pluriversa: Colombia-based futurists visited El Salvador to learn from the country’s move to Bitcoin
- phas3: a UCL-based decentralised science incubator crowd-sourced ideas from their global community of makers
- Careful Industries: a research consultancy is working to understand and anticipate the social impacts of these new technologies
Join us to explore the potential of Web3 technologies to solve global challenges
Online, for 2hrs a day, on the 7–10th November the research team will be hosted by the Frontier Technologies Hub and joined by leading global thinkers and doers in this space to:
- Frame the future: explore the promise and hype of Web3
- Speculate: use horizon scanning and speculative design to imagine the likely scenarios if we ‘do nothing’
- Think backwards: explore ways we might inform and shape the future together through investments, policies and experimentation
👇 Register interest here 👇
For a few hours each day there will be talks, debates, and workshops, featuring speakers and delegates from the civil service, NGOs, charities, think tanks, and tech companies.
Web3 is at a critical point in its evolution and there is still an opportunity to influence how it is implemented at scale. But time is slipping away and the world needs to act fast.
The future is not yet written, and by exploring possible alternative futures we can make sure that Web3 is implemented in as ethical and equitable a way as possible.
👋 See you in November 👋
~ Jim Ralley, Learning Strategist & Designer, Brink (part of the Frontier Technologies Hub)
