Original article: https://polkadot.com/blog/polkadot-web3-philosophy/
Author: Yusuke Obinata (Obi)
Compiled by: OneBlock+
The origins of Web3 are not the rise of Bitcoin or the Internet, but the birth of personal computers.
Gavin Wood, the founder of Ethereum and Polkadot, first proposed the concept of "Web3" when he was the CTO of Ethereum. The core of Web3 is "personal technology" - giving individuals the ability to control their privacy and assets, allowing people to shape their lives according to their own will. This concept is a continuation of the philosophy of personal computing since the 1960s.
When people talk about Web3, they often focus on the evolution of the Internet (starting from the read-only era of Web1), or see it as a cryptographic revolution led by Bitcoin. However, these two perspectives are reasonable, but neither touches the deeper spiritual core of Web3. The "Web3" that people understand today is likely just the tip of the iceberg.
The spiritual origins of Web3: starting with personal computers in the 1960s
The core philosophy of Web3 stems from the rise of personal computers in the late 1960s. Its essence is to return the dominance of technology to individuals - allowing users to create and manage accounts and wallets without intermediaries (self-sovereignty), interact with strangers without trust (verifiability), and freely participate in network governance at their own will (permissionlessness).
Web3 does not control people with technology, but helps people master technology, so that people can think independently and live independently. This value is highly consistent with the concept that personal computers were born with, echoing the counter-culture wave from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, and has since been integrated into the open source movement and the spirit of the Internet.
Long before the term "Web3" was officially proposed, many pioneers in the technology industry had explored the future with similar ideas. In the era when computers were expensive and not yet available to ordinary people, they believed that technology should serve individual freedom. One of the most representative figures was Steve Jobs.
"The Whole Earth Catalog": Steve Jobs and the Spiritual Spark of a Generation
Jobs' teenage years were in the 1960s, an era full of turmoil and idealism. After the post-war economic boom of the 1950s, American society became increasingly standardized, which made many young people disappointed and rebellious against the lives dominated by big companies and mainstream media.
In this context, an independent magazine called Whole Earth Catalog became popular among young people, and Jobs himself was also attracted. With the slogan "Access to Tools", the magazine is committed to introducing readers to various tools that can help individuals think independently and control their destiny.
Long before personal computers and home printers, the first issue of The Whole Earth Catalog was published in 1968, produced entirely with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. At the beginning of the issue, they wrote:
“In the past, the distant powers and glories—government, big business, formal education, the church—had achievements but their serious flaws obscured real progress.
There is an intimate, personal power developing in response to this - individuals can take charge of their own education, find inspiration, shape their environment, and share this adventure with those who are interested. The Whole Earth Catalog is identifying and promoting the tools that can support this process."
—Stuart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog, Fall 1968
In this passage, we can clearly see the spirit that coincides with contemporary Web3 philosophy.
As the 1970s approached, the path to the popularization of personal computers became clearer. An organization called the People's Computer Company was established in 1972 and was the first to warn the earliest hackers that technology, if abused, could become a tool for controlling people.
Today, computers are mostly used against people, not for people; to control people, not to free them. It's time to change all that - we need a "People's Computer Company".
——The first issue of People's Computer Company, collected by Computer History Museum
The now legendary quote, "Stay hungry, Stay foolish," was quoted by Jobs at a Stanford University speech on the back cover of the final edition of the Whole Earth Catalog in 1974. At the end of his speech, he said the magazine was one of the most influential books of his generation, which shows how far it had influenced Jobs' thinking.
It was under this spirit that Jobs participated in the Homebrew Computer Club, which was initiated by another reader of the Whole Earth Catalog in 1975. This was one of the earliest hacker gatherings in history and became the source of the personal computing wave in Silicon Valley. The following year, he co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and launched their first product, Apple I.
Even the early slogans of Apple I reflected the concept of emphasizing individual rights and advocating technological freedom, which later developed into the core essence of open source philosophy:
“Our philosophy is to provide software for our computers for free or nearly free, and you don’t have to pay over and over again for access to this growing library of software.”
—Apple I ad, published in Interface Age magazine, October 1976
Eight years later, Jobs launched the Macintosh, which completely changed the public's perception of computers.
In the commercial that was later recorded in history, Jobs clearly expressed his vision: he did not want computers to become "huge, centralized machines controlled by only a few people", but to turn them into tools to empower individuals. He positioned Apple as the "free fire" in the field of personal computing, competing with the giant IBM that was trying to monopolize the market at the time.
Hacker culture and the rise of the free software movement
In the 1980s, open source technology began to take root, and the "free software movement" rose with it. The representative figure was Richard Stallman. He firmly believed that software should give users the most basic freedom and control. He not only promoted the conceptual distinction between "free software" and "non-free software", but also proposed from an ethical perspective: technological freedom is related to individual freedom.
“Freedom means you have control over your life. If you use a program to get things done in your life, your freedom depends on whether you can control that program. This is especially true if those programs handle important parts of your life.”
—Richard Stallman, Free Software is More Important Than Ever
During the same period, hacker culture was gradually systematized into a unique ideological system, known as the "Hacker Ethic". The classic book "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" ( Hackers ), published in 1984, gave a profound summary of this concept and set a spiritual beacon for countless developers and technical idealists.
Hacker Ethics:
Everyone should have unlimited access to computers (or anything that can teach you how the world works). Get your hands dirty!
All information should be free.
Do not blindly follow authority and advocate decentralization.
Hackers should be judged on their actions, not their education, age, race or position.
You can create art and beauty on the computer.
Computers can improve your life.
—Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (1984)
The awakening of the crypto spirit: Cypherpunk and the fight against abuse of power
In the 1990s, the Internet began to rapidly enter the public eye. However, as technology became more popular, the government's fear of cybercrime gradually increased. The US authorities launched a series of over-regulatory actions, even raiding teenage computer enthusiasts and small game companies.
It is in this context that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) came into being, dedicated to defending freedom of speech and user rights in the digital age and fighting for a legitimate digital space for hackers and ordinary netizens.
At the same time, another wave of thought was quietly brewing. In 1993, the Cypherpunk Manifesto was published, emphasizing the core position of digital privacy in an open society:
Privacy is a necessary condition for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy, but your right to choose how to present yourself to the world.
“Information doesn’t just want to be free, it craves to be free.”
—Eric Hughes, The Cypherpunk Manifesto (1993)
It is this series of ideas that has driven the development of cryptography and ultimately led people towards real technological change - the "Bitcoin White Paper" released by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008.
The official birth of Web3: Gavin Wood ’s vision for social infrastructure
The birth of Bitcoin coincided with the global financial crisis, and its concept of a "decentralized monetary system" was like a shot in the arm, providing a realistic option for hackers, Cypherpunks and libertarians who were disappointed with the financial system.
In the following years, WikiLeaks’ massive leak of government documents and Edward Snowden’s revelations about large-scale online surveillance further strengthened Bitcoin’s early supporters’ belief in fighting the abuse of power.
In 2013, Vitalik Buterin, a 19-year-old contributor to Bitcoin Magazine, proposed a bold idea: Why not expand the blockchain technology behind Bitcoin from a single currency use to a general computing platform? This idea soon evolved into the prototype of Ethereum.
At the beginning of the project, he met Gavin Wood, an outstanding engineer and computer scientist. Gavin not only helped Ethereum move from theory to engineering practice, but also wrote the famous Ethereum "Yellow Paper" in 2014, establishing technical specifications for the entire system.
It was during this period that Gavin Wood first systematically proposed the concept of "Web3".
This is not just the birth of a new term, but also the conception of a new social infrastructure: when technology, social awareness and historical opportunities come together, we can finally build a new world that is trustless, decentralized and centered on individuals.
In a blog post published in 2014, Gavin elaborated on the philosophical logic and social value of the path to Web3:
As time goes by, we need a "zero trust interaction system". Even before the Snowden incident, we realized that entrusting information to some random institutions on the Internet was dangerous. But after Snowden, it became even more obvious that large organizations and governments often try to abuse their power. Therefore, entrusting information to organizations is a fundamental mistake.
Say hello to Web 3.0! A secure social operating system.
— Dr. Gavin Wood, ĐApps: What Web 3.0 Will Look Like (2014)
From hardware terminals to global supercomputers
From Ethereum, to Polkadot, to the JAM protocol currently underway, each project takes a long-term perspective and is rooted in the core value of "freedom" - which is also the soul of personal computers and Web3.
If the personal computer revolution led by Steve Jobs was to create hardware terminals that are "available to everyone" for the general public, then the Web3 philosophy upheld by Gavin Wood and his peers is to build a supercomputer that is "programmable by everyone" for the world.
Let's review: It took Apple 8 years to develop from Apple I to Macintosh; 22 years to develop from Macintosh to iMac; and 31 years to the advent of iPhone. These nodes constitute the trajectory of the evolution of personal computers. Now, we are standing at the threshold of another era: a "global supercomputer" based on Web3 and created for everyone is taking shape.
What kind of future will this bring? We cannot sum it up in one word. But one thing is certain: no matter how the story finally unfolds, there is always such a group of people behind it. They cross the boundaries of technology, system and culture, just to realize a common vision - to build a digital world that is truly people-oriented and gives individuals the greatest freedom and creativity.
