Spinning Silk: Embracing the Chaos of Web3 🕷

Web3 is inevitable.

While that sounds really cool to say in an argument, we have no fucking idea what web3 is going to be. All we know is that we want better lives for everyone, somehow.

As opposed to a dog-eat-dog world, we’re opting for something less cannibalistic. Humans are remarkable creatures capable of creating & adopting tools to thrive in any part of the planet except Antarctica—the closest thing we have to hell.

You see, our human bodies are generalist in design, there’s nothing we really do exceptionally well compared to other animals. Yet, the Inuits (Eskimos) lived in houses built from blocks of snow and the Maasai (Kenyans) hunted wild lions for proof of bravery.

From observation, our niche is somewhere in-between curiosity & intelligence. That and collaboration. So, of course, we built the Internet.

As far as the internet is concerned, there’s no aspect of human life it cannot optimize. It’s an extensive tool created by connecting information through silky, smooth threads.

No, wait. That’s a spiderweb. 🕸

Strikingly similar to humans, spiders are intelligent creatures that use tools to build their homes and conserve their energy. Apart from their silk webs, they secrete an oil that allows them to move along their sticky web situation. In addition, they generate bioelectricity to attract their prey.

Why the biology lesson? Well, nature consistently provides tools for organisms to thrive on the planet. For hunters like spiders and humans, intelligence always beats effort.

Spiders use their intelligence to hunt for food. Humans did and still do, inventing weapons, setting traps, and training dogs.

As I was saying, there’s no aspect of our lives that the human web, the internet, cannot optimize.

Since we no longer have any major predators to run from, our intelligence and curiosity remain unstimulated and restless till we find something to do with ourselves.

It’s the reason we have more and more anxiety and a disappearing sense of purpose with each new generation. It’s also why religions were set up, to give us something to devote our lives to. With great power comes great responsibility, or it will corrupt greatly.

We’re just too intelligent, curious, and capable to live idly. So instead, we invent our way to an easier existence. Cuisine, text, bricks, money, fabric, electricity, toilets, computers, code, name it. What else would we rather be doing?

Ironically, I find that laziness is often a sign of intelligence.

It was in fact, Bill Gates who said, “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it”.

A spider will sit quietly on its web, sending out electronic signals through the web network to attract prey. This is conservation of energy and effort. Sun Tzu would be proud.

I find that laziness tends to be more task-specific than just a personality trait. We always find things compelling enough to expend time, energy & attention on, but we can’t focus on everything, everywhere, all at once.

Enter… the internet.

A hub of intelligence and information accessible to anyone with a data plan. With it, we’ve upgraded how we work, created new jobs, and built fucking AI and we’re still going. As long as humans exist, the internet will exist with us. It’s going nowhere.

So web3? Inevitable. Mark my words.

How to Accept the Internet: Web3

We must first ask, what can web3 do for the quality of life on the planet for ALL of us?

As a social engineer, I research daily how people live their lives and how the internet has changed our perception of reality and each other. With the introduction of technology into communities that never had those solutions, we find an explosive increase in intelligence and commerce following quickly.

As long as we’ve lived, we’ve poured immeasurable resources into acquiring information. With the coming of web3, what we now enjoy is a remarkable ease in acquiring information and solutions to our life’s problems.

Someone has invented the machine you’re still dreaming about in China, or at least the parts. Solutions that colonizers and merchants journeyed to obtain centuries ago can now be accessed remotely from a search engine.

When you think of all the wars that were fought for a glimpse of the level of comfort & ease that the average earthling enjoys today, you realize it was a poor long-term investment.

That’s in the past.

From our vantage point, the future is decentralized. But to achieve that, we have to look at the planet as a whole, not just our side of the fence.

So, let’s pay attention to the Global Happiness Index. There are 195 countries in the world today. Here are the lowest ranking, according to the World Happiness Report.

It’s not a competition, but it may as well be. The next stage of the internet is a nosedive into utility & essentialism. For generations, we’ve been complaining about the quality of life we’re living.

But with web3, we have a chance to actually invent our way there; tech by tech.

If you’ll notice, at the bottom of the list is African countries. The continent will be our case study.

Africa is not waiting for a savior. We’re building our way out of the gutter, by hook or crook. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs explained everything years ago: if you want good & kind individuals, they must first be comfortable.

All the virtues in the world are useless to me if I don’t know where my next meal will come from. We decided to work for a living as a civilization, so a smart government will make it easy for its people to enjoy useful work if it wants to survive.

The data shows that they're not as smart as they think. Naturally, entrepreneurs will rise to the occasion. 👋🏿 Hi.

So, how can the internet make our lives easier again?

Well, smartphone adoption in Africa is predicted to reach 61% by 2025.

In a continent with 70% of its population under 30 years of age, it’s dominated by fresh, hungry, brilliant minds. That means building technology for Africa is key to unlocking web3.

Binance, the world’s largest-volume cryptocurrency exchange realized this when trading volumes from the continent jumped by 589% in 2022.

The reasons are multiple. Failing fiat currencies and banking systems/regulations take the most of the cake. Africa is looking for alternatives, and web3 holds great promise.

In countries like Nigeria struggling politically for more capable leaders, the internet has been a tool to help people find their voice. Even after being banned by the government months before, Twitter played a critical role in the massive & viral #EndSARS protests against police brutality for the country’s youth.

In Africa, technology is not a luxury, it's a lifeboat. As the world's 3rd largest economy in a 3rd world continent, we've got our work cut out for us. Aje.

Your idea of web3 might be multiple income streams and shorter working hours. A couple of countries have even trialed 4-day work-weeks with much success.

Whatever pattern web3 will weave, our future on the internet is sha the one that makes our lives easier.

Success on digital platforms like Twitch & YouTube enables creators to live off their streaming revenue. Africans are, in fact, making millions of US dollars online. With remote work, more and more companies rush to offer location-agnostic (your location doesn’t matter) pay to world-class employees from every continent. That’s how they get African talent to support their growth.

Our experiences & heritage enable us to be the deepest human resource on the planet. Google it. Cal Newport would be astonished at what we accomplish in the direst of situations.

And as AI synchronizes with human workflow, smart Africans will only get smarter and more capable of solving global problems through technology.

Trading with Bitcoin is now possible on the USSD network thanks to Machankura. Africans are now using Bitcoin for commerce whether they have an internet connection or not. The founder also runs Exonumia, a non-profit that teaches Africans how cryptocurrency works in their native language.

I was thoroughly impressed.

It aligns perfectly with my work at Recess, my Educational Research Centre that’s using technology to make school easy for African students.

The flow of value is more than our government's decisions about our currency. Before the current government existed, people still had to live together. They definitely traded. But with the era of countable currency, Africans also need financial education to grow and maintain our new-found wealth.

Recess will help with that, and cryptocurrency is now a means to that end. The value we trade is in our agreement.

I also wasn't surprised to find that the unhappiest countries are also the poorest.

Our systems suck. And because humans will inevitably innovate, we've been forced to wield information technology; now doing remarkable things with it.

So, what now? Happily ever after singing Kumbaya all day? Fuck no. This is a competition. Welcome to dissonance.

Dissonance: To Diss or Not To Diss?

All organisms living today thrive on rebellion. Life is competition, but we’re better off collaborating. The dignity of labor is only felt in meaningful work. Work that you know will outlast you and soothe the existential ache we feel when we’re not in balance, in tune. Music.

Nous sommes ici.

When asked about their issues with hiring, employers often sigh and say that, “good employees are hard to find”. But that’s the same for businesses. Nobody is perfect, so it makes sense to huddle up for your benefit.

Therefore, differences between cultures will serve the planet better than homogeneity. Not the diversity hire your team gets to look more contemporary. Not the cheap labor you nervously pay for because living conditions are dire. Instead, the valuable gemstone you look for that lived life from a perspective you’ve never had.

What employers pay for is experience and solutions. We can’t innovate when we all see the world the same way.

Our species has survived partly because there is variety in the gene pool. It’s also why incest is a horrible idea. Kings in Europe were often sickly because people were trying to “protect the bloodline” or some stupid shit like that.

So if we decide to live and live well with each other, the trade of each country is priceless.

How priceless?

The Portuguese first arrived in Africa from the west, the coast of Sierra Leone in 1460. They were a world power in search of a shorter trade route to South Asia for their fabrics, spices & gold. They dominated the world thanks to necessity & their resulting technology.

On discovering civilization in West Africa, they found our cities larger, more hygienic, and better organized than European ones. They renamed the port city Eko, to Lagos; after their own port city Lagos in Portugal because of its similarities.

By the 16th century, they led the transatlantic slave trade of Africans to Europe and gave the world Christiano Ronaldo 4 centuries later. Read about the Portuguese in Africa here.

Arabs however, had found their way to Africa hundreds of years before, bringing trade and Islam from the north of the continent and spreading along the east coast between the 8th & 9th centuries. I grew up watching cartoons and movies in Arabic from their cable TV.

From AD 650 and even till the 20th century, Arabia shipped million enslaved Africans (especially women and children) to their land. Read about the Arabians in Africa here. Read about recent investments here.

We won’t dive deep into the morality of slavery and point fingers around. The whole world has profited from exploiting Africa even beyond slavery, and even within the continent, there are still businesses thriving from other people’s despair. Human trafficking of Nigerians to Libya happens almost every year, and many more have come back with stories of immeasurable suffering.

But the next generation is leading the comeback—with or without our leaders. In 1989, Philip Emeagwali, a Nigerian, built the world’s fastest computer. The first time he saw a computer was in 1974. He was quickly shipped to the US with all his kinsmen after his invention.

Africans are now all over the world. I often joke that in every country, there is a Nigerian. And if you’re not competing, we’ll take your job. 💀

Your lips, My lips, Apocalypse

Trade can only happen when at least two parties have value to exchange and set up a transaction for it.

Mind you, the earliest record of trade in Africa happened across the Sahara on rock paintings from 10,000 B.C; found by the Greek historian & geographer Herodotus.

It would also interest you to know that animals trade too. But Africa’s resources remain looted by organizations and constricting independence agreements with colonizers. I’m even tired of thinking about it.

Now that the world is moving to electricity as a major power source, Lithium is going to become a source of conflict if humans are dumb enough to let it.

The apocalypse that humans are often afraid of is more likely to happen as a death of identity. As a result of the transatlantic slave trade of Africans, the concept of identity for black people has expanded further than the continent.

But after death is life. Apocalypse actually translates as clarity. From the death of every civilization, a stronger one springs up. The old identity Africans inherited breaks in contact with new information & technology. The masquerade has woken up again.

When Julius Caesar, the dictator, needed to return to power in Rome, Cleopatra agreed to be his benefactor. She was the richest woman in the world at the time. Cleopatra in turn needed his military might to install her as ruler of Egypt.

After some resistance, they both got what they wanted and with jara (extra); a child. Ptolemy XV Caesarion. This child was quickly assassinated at age 14 by Augustus Caesar, Julius’s nephew and adopted son, to eliminate his competition.

You see, even though other animals trade, humans are the only ones capable of using 3rd-party systems to create trust. Without trust, businesses will die. Yet trust is a big problem with humans, and even more common in nature.

So web3 is evolving to soothe those tensions.

Web3 shooters

As much as Africa is great and yada yada, we’re going nowhere without the necessary hardware.

So, frontliners like Meta, Google, E& (Etisalat), and others are investing in bringing 33 more subsea cables to connect the continent digitally. List of incoming cables here.

In 2008, we had just 3 cables connecting us to the interwebs.

But inland telecommunications networks are a federal responsibility, so when Elon Musk announced Starlink, it’s no wonder that Nigeria was pregnant with anticipation. Since my friend’s girlfriend got him one, I decided to start accepting it as part of my dowry.

I recently rediscovered my old Blackberry. This technology, the first smartphone, possessed Nigerians quicker than we could even catch ourselves. In the same way, web3 is coming for us all. Mike Lizardis, the lead perpetrator of the Canadian tech said and I quote, “The kiss of death is when you allow marketing to dumb down innovations.”

And so as long as humans need innovation to live, we’ll create the technology for it. We can fucking fly already. Fiverr happened because the things happening in Africa are happening all over the world. People don’t get enough out of their work.

Business is either gold or water; wants and needs. When you build businesses solving needs, people will give you more than money. The guy who invented the fan is never forgotten on a fucking hot day.

While Blackberry may have failed to innovate software, we’d be infinitely stupid to fail to innovate hardware with the amount of gap between them. Hardware needs to catch up to web3.

This web3 will get closer to fruition as African startups solve systematic issues that our governments cannot. There’s no competent government without competent people, so we’ll solve the problems regardless of their decision to support us.

Funding for African startups is also at an all-time high. Investment in the African tech startup ecosystem broke records and crossed US $3bn in 2022, against all the global economic wahala everyone else was facing. News here.

The ease of business is still dangerously low, yet Africans are still braving the odds to show their mettle. It is Africa, in fact, that will connect web3, not Zuckerberg or Meta. But without the support of successful enterprises, the new businesses cannot stand.

Usability on the internet for Africans and other developing countries is foundational in helping them earn a living. If people can ignore common sense for Ponzi schemes, they can trust the internet if they have ways to make it their own.

The countries most unhappy first need a fuckton of money to solve our infrastructural issues and make our day-to-day lives easier. So the next generation wields web3 tools to build a new order on the internet.

Every industry that’s successful on the internet holds promise for developing economies. eCommerce has more ground to cover in Africa, the 3rd largest economy. And instead of having to dedicate days to transportation, we get logistics businesses, and so on.

Should we be afraid of web3?

Definitely, and that’s a good thing. Fear is a helpful emotion. It reminds us that there are things worth protecting and preserving. Web3 is very much inevitable, so it’s therefore pointless to fear it.

As we develop web3, there are inevitable loopholes people will exploit for their benefit. Our job is to learn on the job. If people can think up ways to be cruel, we can think up even better ways to make kindness the norm. It’s harder to be generous in poverty.

We’re neither in utopia or dystopia. Just topia. What it becomes is up to us.

Taking up the collective responsibility to build society instead of leaving a dictator or group of people responsible is costly. By stripping power systems of their power, we also gain the corresponding responsibility.

So if we destroy our species, blame would also be decentralized.

Socrates was forced to commit suicide because he decided against democracy, saying that the ignorant would be deceived for their votes; worded as demagoguery, practice countries like Nigeria suffer from. That’s why companies like Recess are important for Africa because knowledge is power.

The Yorubas have a saying that translates, “the one that asks questions never misses the way.”

I read pleasantly in a newspaper headline this month, “Nigerian politicians struggle to tame social media generation.”

This sort of chaos is what happens when humans are exposed to information. The mask breaks and the masquerade awakens. With cryptocurrency, Nigerians are pushing back against our government’s shortcomings. Why are you the government if there’s nothing to show for it? We should support better-qualified people. Dissatisfied Africans have chosen to save ourselves since there’s no one coming to save them.

During the 2023 elections in Nigeria, we faced a month-long financial crunch. We couldn’t even use the money if it wasn’t cash, and cash was scarce. Banks failed to move money. The government failed us, and the elections were not democratic enough. The rigging was blatant. The loopholes in our voting tech were also apparent. Crypto definitely grew in adoption as a result.

The blockchain will become useful in helping countries like Nigeria transition to meritocracy. For tech that you’re still imagining, chances are, there’s a patent on Google Patents for it made by an Asian. The competition will build web3.

Competition breeds strength

Only 2 countries weren’t colonized in Africa, Ethiopia, and Liberia.

Ethiopia, because of its location, economic viability & unity. They also had good generals and were skilled in the art of war. They may have also had time to prepare and more to die for. Because of their actions, Ethiopia remains a symbol of strength that all of us look to.

Liberia, on the other hand, was created on request by America because they never believed African Americans and Afro-Carribeans would ever be fully integrated into their new societies. America created the Back-to-Africa movement, but that didn’t move the African-Americans.

They also didn’t have biological resistance to African diseases. Slavery was all they’d known, they were just learning to be free.

Now, how about that? They’re just as American as the European Americans and Native Americans but have an African heritage that their rebellion comes from.

We want to kick against something, to have a standard we can refer to. Without it, we have no will to keep living life. Without the odds, we have neither learned to exist nor live sustainably. This is poor. Even your Creator airs your DMs.

Competition keeps us agile. It asks, is this the best you can do?

Software Saturation & then, China!

Every society has values. Humans just attach those to an abstract concept and call it money.

Right now, everyone’s running to information technology to earn a living. But without the hardware, all this is not possible.

If electricity isn’t available, there’s less access to the internet, and that means more poor decisions. If our food is not healthy, we will die. Everyone’s leaving the responsibility of the world to someone else. That’s how people get shot in urban neighborhoods.

If someone’s not paying attention, no one’s watching. We have to fold our sleeves. This is the real world. We could die anytime.

Luckily, China is way ahead of us. They’ve already invented solutions for our problems, and now Africans are embracing diversity with them, with some complaints in their human resources department. They learn quickly though, so I recommend feedback.

The work is too much for one person, so a communal effort makes sense. 100 people doing 1% is 100%. In Africa, we’ve been running our communities like that since before we submitted to leadership from freshmen. These people were running Nigeria at my age (a year younger in fact), without enough experience.

I’d say these leaders are the best Nigeria could muster after all its been through, and that’s disappointing. We are becoming so much more. Africa knows how terrified the world is of her awoken masquerade. We’re on track in Nigeria to become a global trade leader in a few years. It’s inevitable. Your job is to invest yourself. TY Bello no lie. The land is green, and white, and green.

Finally, we conclude ✨

Sudan is currently going through another war and one of their most popular YouTube channels,

Zool Cafe, posts jokes about the government. People are laughing because there’s nothing else they can do. Laughing isn’t always expressing joy.

People are tired of poor leaders. Being a king without carrying the weight of the crown comes with mutiny.

Here’s an anecdote:

In every pot of food, we master the 4 elements and travel the boundaries of life and death in the name of humanity. All humans do is innovate and solve problems for ourselves, trying to find harmony with the world around us.

When spiders find a struggler in their silk webs, they rush down immediately to their good fortune. Food has come. The wait was worth it. And in a moment, they inject a toxin into their prey.

Sometimes for a quick and painless death, and other times to liquify the tissues of their prey into a juicy smoothie. Some spiders spit venom. Some are mostly vegetarian. Others just wrap up their prey in silk and present it to a female spider they’re trying to get freaky with. Trade makes communities possible.

Some spiders are solitary and even cannibalistic. Other spiders have evolved to be social, similar to ants and bees. Social insects survive by creating a nest and distibuting labour. With social spiders, each member of their society is capable of playing any role, instead of biologically being restricted to being a worker, queen or drone.

With their level of collaboration, they’re able to kill and eat prey they’d never have captured on their own. Read about social spiders here.

Contrary to how humans view ourselves as the apex predator of a food chain, I was astonished to find at about 8 years old from my new encyclopaedia that we’re part of a food web. We rely on systems to survive and create new ones to make life easier.

Web3 is just the beginning of human spiders. What’s up, danger? 🕷

Featured image source.