At the start of October, the Hack Seasons Convention in Singapore served as a global gathering for technologists, traders, and innovators to debate the way forward for blockchain and Web3. A spotlight of the occasion was the hearth chat titled “Joe Lubin and Neal Stephenson Current Media 3.0: Storytelling On-Chain.”
Moderated by Rebecca Barkin, Co-Founder and CEO of Lamina1, the session featured Joseph Lubin, Co-Founding father of Ethereum and Founder and CEO of ConsenSys and writer and Co-Founding father of Lamina1 Neal Stephenson. The dialogue centered on how blockchain expertise is reworking media, inventive expression, and the narratives that form modern tradition.
The dialogue started with an outline of latest developments at Lamina1, an interactive media platform owned by each storytellers and followers. Lamina1 not too long ago introduced a partnership with ConsenSys’s Linea blockchain and plans to launch a brand new mental property (IP) mission, “Artefact,” on the Linea community.
As IP more and more spans a number of codecs and is accelerated by AI, questions round possession, management, and validation have develop into central. Neal Stephenson, whose writing has lengthy explored the social and cultural implications of rising applied sciences, highlighted present developments in AI as they relate to content material creation. He famous that the AI trade is extremely centralized, dominated by a number of corporations with the sources to coach massive fashions. This centralization creates a dependency on opaque techniques, limiting transparency and accessibility. Within the context of content material manufacturing, some advocates of AI have instructed decreasing the affect or compensation of creators, but the writer emphasised the potential for AI to be leveraged to learn creators somewhat than diminish them.
Joe Lubin echoed considerations in regards to the centralization of massive tech and framed the event of the Web3 ecosystem as a response to those constructions. He defined that for millennia, societies have operated below top-down command and management, the place authorities and intermediaries handle possession and privileges. Whereas efficient for constructing civilizations, such constructions can drawback the vast majority of contributors. Within the realm of user-generated content material, the prevailing mannequin may be described as authority-generated. Joe Lubin highlighted that the appearance of decentralized belief, first operationalized by means of blockchain by Satoshi Nakamoto, has created a basis for a brand new mannequin: a decentralized, user-driven civilization. This strategy doesn’t search to dismantle current corporations however to allow a extra distributed, community-oriented system. Lamina1’s integration with networks like Linea is meant to empower customers, fostering a golden age of user-generated and community-valued content material.
Joe Lubin additional expressed a deep dedication to supporting the humanities, music, and the broader creator financial system by means of decentralization. He emphasised the significance of IP in enabling artists to maintain themselves independently. Conventional techniques have usually favored organizations with authorized sources over creators themselves. By leveraging expertise, IP constructs can develop into extra granular, composable, and speedy, significantly by way of copyright and licensing. This shift strikes past scarcity-driven fashions and towards an period of abundance facilitated by automation, AI, and robotics. In such a system, creators can focus extra on creativity and content material technology, whereas neighborhood mechanisms can reward participation and contribution.
The dialogue then turned to the origins of the time period “metaverse,” usually traced again to Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crash,” and his reflections on how digital developments have unfolded since its publication. The writer defined that the e-book was written within the late Nineteen Eighties and early Nineties, a time when the web existed however was largely unknown to most people. When the novel was revealed, two main technological occasions occurred in the identical 12 months: the creation of the World Huge Net and the discharge of the sport “Doom.” Each occasions performed transformative roles in making pc graphics extensively accessible. The net offered a platform for exchanging photos, whereas “Doom” pushed the demand for extra succesful computer systems, increasing entry to immersive digital experiences.
Neil Stephenson famous that the early period of the web had a “hippie grad pupil” part, marked by idealistic visions of common entry to info. This era was ultimately adopted by centralization and consolidation, exemplified by Web2 platforms. In his novel, components of the metaverse are managed by centralized corporations, whereas others stay open and freely accessible. One of the crucial vital, but unexpected, penalties has been the rise of social media algorithms that monitor consumer habits and manipulate content material to maximise engagement, with far-reaching societal results that Neil Stephenson didn’t anticipate within the Nineties.
Joe Lubin noticed that the dystopian parts described within the novel had been by no means the first focus for these creating new applied sciences or searching for enterprise capital. What stood out as a substitute was the writer’s vivid depiction of our on-line world, which offered a compelling imaginative and prescient for the capabilities of computing applied sciences as they started to mature.
The audio system shared views on the potential of rising applied sciences. Each emphasised the significance of harnessing the most effective features of those instruments to learn humanity and create constructive social influence as digital innovation continues to advance.
Lamina1 Unveils ‘Artefact’ On Linea, Mixing Storytelling And Fan Participation
The dialog shifted to Lamina1’s upcoming plans because the platform prepares to roll out its first unique IP, “Artefact,” immediately on the Linea blockchain. The mission combines a narrative world with a system designed to encourage fan participation and engagement.
Neal Stephenson shared that the brand new IP advanced based mostly on concepts he had beforehand explored throughout a chat in New Zealand. He famous the bizarre scenario by which massive numbers of individuals are creating AI whereas others warning of its potential risks. In nature, evolution happens by means of competitors, with no entity receiving particular privilege with out dealing with challenges. Neil Stephenson instructed {that a} related aggressive framework may very well be utilized to AI, permitting techniques to evolve by testing their capabilities in opposition to each other. He additional thought of a situation by which a centralized, impersonal AI would exist in distinction with AI deployed in a distributed method by communities of people, who use the expertise to learn themselves and their communities. This idea served as the inspiration for a collaborative world-building mission – Lamina1 – enabling artists and sport designers to start setting up a sport universe.
The panel concluded by offering attendees with a preview of the brand new IP, providing an early glimpse into the story world and its interactive options.
