The internet reduced distance in ways that would have been difficult to imagine just a few decades ago.
We can now work with people weโve never met in person, learn from someone on another continent, discover cultures outside our own far more easily, publish without first asking an institution for permission, or find communities we might never have found around us.
But as we came to rely on these technologies more, access and connection could also become dependence.
Convenience can lead us to give up more control than we realize. Systems that bring people together can also limit what people see or what they are able to do, while concentrating enormous influence in a handful of companies.
What becomes normal online still comes down to human choices โ including what we are willing to trade for convenience and what we are not.
You donโt need to understand how all of this works technically to be affected by it. We already rely on digital systems for communication, work, payments, storing memories, and a growing part of our creative lives.
When that infrastructure changes, our lives change with it.
๐๐ข๐ฌ๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐จ๐ ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ๐๐๐๐๐ฌ๐ฌ โ ๐๐ก๐๐ฉ๐ญ๐๐ซ ๐ starts further back than SourceLess itself.
This first chapter looks at the technological path that made projects like it possible: from the early Web, through the platform era, to decentralization and digital ownership in Web3.