Two weeks ago we analysed some of the whys of digital fashion. Before coming back to it, we received a lot of demands to explain what Web 3 is.
For NTZNS, the term Web 3 is too limited to describe the future 10 years from now and it goes back more than 30 years.
33 years ago, in 1989 Web 1 started. The internet made its debut and all the brands claimed a position in it. Some new brands grabbed the opportunity to bring novelties into the market, like Amazon, and gradually the retail system changed forever.
We can talk about technology and the evolution that makes things happen but that does not explain the changes in our business models and customer behavior.
In 1993, in just thirty minutes 10.000 users downloaded a free game called Doom, which crashed the network at the University of Michigan. That was revolutionary because it was the first time people thought about sharing a whole product they had worked on for free directly to their audience.
That was an earthquake to the foundation of the industrial economy where everything needs to be controlled by industrials, institutions, and big brands.
6 years later, Napster did the same in the music industry and the record labels freaked out and characterized it as illegal because it allegedly did not respect the copyrights of the creators. But that was the seed that Apple took proceeding to develop iTunes in 2001 making the record labels disappear overnight.
That was the shift from the Industrial empire to the connection economy. Before this, we heard a song on the radio and we had to buy a record from a Virgin store miles away from our place. A record that included 10 more unknown songs that we had never wanted but were forced to buy. Now we have more composers, more music, more buyers, and no intermediaries.
Web 2 was born under the idea of the elimination of intermediaries and the rise of individuals. If you are a musician you upload your music to iTunes, if you are a writer you self-publish, if you want to broadcast you go to youtube, if you are in the taxi services you go to Uber, if you are in hospitality services you go to AirBnB and if you are a fashion designer you load your masterpieces in an eShop. Guess what? Nobody is there to stop you.
This evolution is the biggest shift in the history of technology. The ability to communicate, connect, trade, and collaborate with people around the world without permission from institutions, judgment from committees, or any other bureaucratic system.
As Spiderman’s uncle said, “Great power comes with great responsibility”. People have become more responsible, and aware of the processes behind every industry. We have become both a media and a creative spot. Independent nodes in a network! Now we know because we are witnessing everything, while before we were waiting on our couch for the news to broadcast. Plus the factory is not needed anymore as we are the factory.
This awareness makes us challenge our environmental impact, society, the way we do business, and, ultimately, our whole lifestyle.
In that way, we force technology to do something to pull us out of this endless circle of living the same things in a different wrap.
What an artist started in 1986 by burning a wooden 9-feet statue in the desert of San Francisco, became a statement in 2010 as one of the most known art festivals in the world. Because people desire not a change but to build something new.
Seth Godin said, “You have to destroy the perfect to enable the impossible”, and that is exactly what Doom, iTunes, Uber, Amazon, Apple, and Airbnb did. And now people see the impossible happen, they ask for fundamental change.
Web3 is here to destroy the perfect perception we have about reality and enable the impossible, the ability to build entire worlds without gravity or other limitations.
If Web 1 was about the internet, Web2 was about the elimination of intermediates and the rise of individuals, Web 3 is about human evolution!
The physical world will never be the definition of the real world anymore. It will be just a subtotal of reality. Now we will have the virtual, the augmented, and other versions, all included in reality. We chose the word Metaverse to describe it. The Metaverse is you in a world inside a world.
In Web 3, heels feel no pain while dancing at a party, the body doesn’t sweat when wearing fur in the desert (plus no need to kill animals either or in fact to use any physical textile), you can buy a huge diamond ring (without thinking that you have paid a warlord in Africa) and, after this great adventure, end up drinking cocktails by the pool while still sitting in your room. The difference is that what you experienced was real!
Web 3 is not at all about technology. It’s about sustainability, freedom, and human evolution. Things that you can do by mixing technology and the vision for a better life.
It can be you wearing goggles and being in two different realities at the same time or you as a metahuman meeting other people while having any shape you want, wearing anything you desire, and changing shape, skin, and garments based on your mood. All in a glimpse of an eye (leave your wardrobe style in our hands!).
It’s not about playing a game. It’s about you feeling everything in the environment. But because it’s a virtual one you can have unbelievable abilities that you don’t have in the physical environment. Zero gravity, genderless, speed of light, teleporting, change the heat of your body based on your mood (actually everything changes based on your desires).
Your dress does not need to be a static textile but it can have abilities like Dr. Strange’s cape. Or to be just liquid water running through your body connecting you with nature when meditating, while you are just doing other things.
Well, at Jedi level if Web 1 was Obi-Wan Kenobi and Web 2 Lucas Skywalker, then Web 3 is Yoda in his infancy!
Are we there yet? Almost!
To help Yoda grow and teach us his powers we need everyone to help develop this future. We need developers, designers, and investors. But mostly we need people who see this future in a positive way, a way leading to human evolution.
We need visionaries and imagination. We need problem-solvers and result-oriented people.
If you want this change to happen in the coming years, join us, and be part of our community and our network of ambitious, visionary, and problem-solving people.
Web 3 is not a good enough term to describe the future but it is the beginning of a very shiny era, exactly like Web 1 and Web 2 were.
“My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.” — Charles Kettering
