Despite the web’s challenges, there’s much that excites me about its future and and some of these characteristics are intrinsic to the platform:
- The concept of instant games promotes highly shareable apps via a simple link that require no install process: show up and start.
- Having multiple payment providers, potentially with the addition of cryptocurrencies means if you wanted to also just invent your own value system, maybe some kind of post-money coupon thing, it’s possible to integrate with existing systems…
- User-controlled personal data stores are already being used on the web and will eventually make their way to native apps.
- Edge apps that work completely in the browser are easy to mirror or fork, and virtually free to distribute: imagine having your site/app available everywhere via IPFS
- The culture of perpetual improvement, with less focus on versioning, is normal: people do not need to ‘install updates’ for each app they use on every change.
- It’s just more fun and with a lower barrier to entry, which results in more diverse and dynamic communities who form part of a larger public commons: more sparks, more life, more weird.