Joe: Alright Lewis, I'll say a tech term, you give me the first word that comes to mind. Ready? 'Blockchain'. Lewis: Oof. 'Scam'? Joe: Okay, fair. How about 'Web3'? Lewis: Hype. Joe: And that's exactly the perception our book today is trying to dismantle. It argues that behind the scams and the hype, there's a fundamental shift happening in how the internet is built, and it could change everything. Lewis: I'm intrigued, and also highly skeptical. What's the book? Joe: Today we’re diving into Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet by Chris Dixon. Lewis: Ah, Chris Dixon. And he isn't just some random tech blogger. He's a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, one of the biggest venture capital firms in the world. He actually leads their multi-billion-dollar crypto fund. So when he talks about the future of the internet, he has billions of reasons to be optimistic. Joe: A huge amount of skin in the game. And that's what makes this book so fascinating and, for many readers, so polarizing. It's a New York Times Bestseller, but the reviews are all over the map. Tech insiders and CEOs praise it as a visionary masterpiece, while a lot of readers and critics dismiss it as clever propaganda for his own investments. Lewis: Perfect. So we're not just talking about a book, we're talking about a manifesto with billions of dollars behind it. So, if he's selling us a new internet, what does he think is so broken about the one we have now?

Joe: Well, Dixon starts by taking us back in time. He frames the internet's history in three eras. The first was the 'Read' era of the 90s. Think early websites and email. It was built on open protocols—technical rules that anyone could use and build on, without asking for permission. It was a decentralized, democratic frontier. Lewis: I remember that internet. It was clunky, slow, and full of weird GeoCities pages, but it felt… free. Like a digital public square. Joe: Exactly. Then came the 'Read-Write' era, starting in the mid-2000s. This is the age of social media—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. Suddenly, publishing wasn't just for techies. Anyone could create and share content. It was a creative explosion. But there was a catch. These platforms weren't open protocols; they were private companies. They were corporate networks. Lewis: And that's where the trouble started? Joe: That's where the 'original sin,' as he frames it, took place. Dixon describes what he calls the 'attract-extract' cycle. It's the core business model of the corporate web. Lewis: Attract-extract. That sounds ominous. Give me a concrete example. Joe: The book gives a perfect one: the story of Facebook and the game developer Zynga. Remember FarmVille? Lewis: Oh man, I lost weeks of my life to that game. My aunt still sends me requests for virtual pigs. Joe: Well, in the early days, Facebook desperately needed apps like FarmVille to make its platform sticky and interesting. So they courted Zynga, gave them access to their users, and promoted them heavily. That was the 'attract' phase. Zynga brought in millions of users who spent hours on Facebook. But once Facebook became dominant, once it didn't need Zynga as much as Zynga needed it, the relationship flipped. Lewis: Let me guess. The 'extract' phase began. Joe: You got it. Facebook started changing the rules. They throttled Zynga's ability to reach users, they started building their own competing games, and they demanded a bigger cut of the revenue. They had lured the developers in to build their kingdom, and then they pulled up the drawbridge. Lewis: That's the ultimate bait-and-switch. They use you to build their empire, then tear down your house to get a better view. It's brutal. Joe: It's absolutely brutal, and Dixon argues it’s the standard playbook. It happened with Twitter and its third-party app developers. It happens with Amazon and its marketplace sellers, where Amazon uses their sales data to launch its own competing products. It creates this massive 'platform risk' that stifles innovation. Why would any smart entrepreneur build their business on someone else's land, knowing the landlord can change the rules or evict them at any moment? Lewis: It’s like trying to build a city in a theme park. The owner of the park will always have the final say. You mentioned the fall of RSS earlier. How does that fit in? Joe: The fall of RSS is another key story. RSS was an open protocol, like email. It let you subscribe to any blog or news site and get all your updates in one place, an app of your choice. It was the decentralized dream. But it was a bit clunky for the average user. Lewis: Right, you had to know what you were doing. Joe: Exactly. Then along came Twitter and Facebook. They offered a much slicker, easier tool for getting updates. And it was free. They subsidized the tool to win over users. But once they had the network, they cut off interoperability with RSS. They didn't want you reading tweets in your own reader; they wanted you on their site, seeing their ads. They won by offering a better 'tool' so they could own the 'network.' Lewis: So the open, slightly messy city gets replaced by the shiny, corporate-owned theme park where the owners can change the price of admission anytime they want. Okay, I see the problem. So what's the solution? Another startup that just promises to be nicer?

Joe: This is where Dixon introduces his big, and very controversial, idea. He says we're entering a third era of the internet: the 'Read-Write-Own' era. And the construction material for this new era is blockchain networks. Lewis: Okay, 'Own.' That's the new word. What does that actually mean? I 'own' my Facebook profile, don't I? I picked the embarrassing photos and everything. Joe: Do you, though? Dixon would say you're just a renter. He points to a story where an artist had the Instagram handle '@metaverse' for years. The day Facebook rebranded to Meta, her account was shut down without warning. They just took it. Because on their platform, they make the rules. You don't truly own your identity or your content. Lewis: Wow. So my digital identity is basically on a lease that can be terminated at any time. Joe: Precisely. And this is where blockchain flips the script. Dixon argues that the promise of a blockchain network is the shift from a 'Don't be evil' motto, which was Google's old slogan and is ultimately just a suggestion, to a 'Can't be evil' guarantee. Lewis: How is that even possible? What stops the people running the blockchain from getting greedy and pulling the same tricks? Joe: The rules are baked directly into the code. The network is run by a decentralized community of computers, not a single company. He uses a brilliant analogy: blockchains are like network constitutions. They are formal, written rules for how the network operates, and they are incredibly difficult to change without overwhelming consensus from the participants. Lewis: A constitution for the internet. I like that. But how does the 'ownership' part work? What am I actually owning? Joe: You own 'tokens.' And this is a key concept. Tokens are digital assets that represent ownership, governance rights, or access to a network's services. They are like digital property deeds and voting rights rolled into one. And this allows for a completely different economic model. Lewis: Okay, an example would be helpful here. Joe: The book gives a fantastic one: Uniswap, a decentralized financial exchange. It's like a stock market, but it runs on code without a central company. After it became successful, it did something unprecedented. It 'airdropped'—basically gave away for free—its own governance token, UNI, to every single person who had ever used the platform. Lewis: Every single person? Joe: Every single one. About a quarter-million people woke up one morning to find 400 UNI tokens in their digital wallets. At the time, that was worth over a thousand dollars, and it gave them a vote in how Uniswap would be run in the future. In total, Uniswap allocated 60% of all its tokens to its community. They didn't just have users; they created owners. Lewis: Wait, so instead of a stock option plan for a few hundred employees in Silicon Valley, it was an ownership plan for a quarter-million global users? That's a completely different world. Joe: It's a fundamentally different model of value distribution. It's about rewarding the people who actually create the value for the network—the early adopters, the creators, the participants. Lewis: Okay, that sounds incredible. Almost too good to be true. Which brings me back to my first reaction. For every inspiring story like Uniswap, it feels like there are a thousand scams, a dozen spectacular collapses, and a whole lot of people losing their life savings on worthless tokens. How does this utopian vision of ownership survive contact with the dystopian reality of the crypto world?

Joe: That is the billion-dollar question, and it leads us right into the final, and most important, part of the book. Dixon tackles this head-on with a framework he calls 'The Computer versus The Casino.' Lewis: Ah, the Casino. I've heard of this place. It's where my cousin lost his rent money on a dog-themed coin. You're talking about the speculation, the bubbles, the epic collapse of exchanges like FTX. How does Dixon, a man whose firm is a major investor in this very casino, square that circle? Joe: He leans right into it. He says the 'Casino'—the get-rich-quick schemes, the meme coins, the endless trading and speculation—is real, it's loud, and it gets all the media attention because it's dramatic. But it's a distraction from the real story, which is the 'Computer.' The 'Computer' is the underlying technology being built by serious developers. It's the slow, difficult work of creating a new kind of internet infrastructure. Lewis: So he's saying the casino is just a sideshow to the main event? Joe: Exactly. And he uses a powerful historical analogy: the dot-com bubble of the late 90s. The 'Casino' of that era gave us hilariously bad ideas like Pets.com, which burned through millions of dollars and went bankrupt. The bubble burst, and people lost fortunes. Lewis: I remember that. Everyone thought the internet was a fad. Joe: Right. But Dixon's point is that the speculative frenzy of the 'Casino' also funded the build-out of the 'Computer.' All that irrational investment paid for the fiber-optic cables, the data centers, and the server farms that the real, sustainable internet was built on. And from the ashes of Pets.com, the 'Computer' gave us Google, Amazon, and the web as we know it. The casino was a temporary, if painful, phase that enabled the permanent revolution. Lewis: That's a very compelling reframe. But it's also a very convenient one for a venture capitalist, isn't it? 'Ignore the massive fraud and financial ruin, folks, and please focus on the long-term vision we're selling!' How do we, as regular people, tell the difference between a genuine 'computer' project and just another slot machine at the 'casino'? Joe: That's the challenge. Dixon's answer is that you have to look at the fundamentals, what he calls 'tokenomics.' Is the token's value tied to the network's actual use? For example, on the Ethereum network, you have to pay a small fee, called 'gas,' in its native token, ETH, to use the network's services. The more people build and use apps on Ethereum, the more demand there is for ETH. Its value is tied to its utility. Lewis: So you're looking for a real economy, not just hype. Joe: You're looking for a real economy. He quotes the famous investor Benjamin Graham, who said that in the short run, the market is a 'voting machine,' driven by popularity and hype. But in the long run, it's a 'weighing machine,' driven by substance and fundamental value. The goal is to find the projects that are being weighed, not just voted on.

Lewis: So when you strip it all away, what's the final takeaway from Read Write Own? Joe: Ultimately, Dixon's book is a powerful and deeply optimistic call to action. He's arguing that the internet's current path—towards more consolidation, more extraction, more corporate control—is not inevitable. We're at a fork in the road, and we can choose to build something different. Lewis: And he's saying that blockchains, for all their messy, casino-like baggage, are the only credible tool we have to build that different path. A path where we're not just users or creators, but owners. Where we can be citizens of digital cities, not just customers in a corporate theme park. Joe: That's the vision. It's about moving from a state of digital serfdom to one of digital citizenship. And he ends with a point that I found particularly resonant. He says this isn't just a technical debate; it's a generational one. He talks about how he sees the brightest young minds, the most talented engineers and creators, turning down high-paying jobs at Google and Meta. Lewis: Why would they do that? Joe: Because they don't want to spend their careers building a better ad-targeting algorithm. They want to build something new. They want to work on the frontier. They are drawn to the 'computer' because they believe it's a chance to build a better, fairer, more open internet. Lewis: That's a hopeful thought to end on. It makes you look at your social media feed a little differently and ask, who really owns this space? And who should own it? Joe: A question worth asking. Dixon's final words in the book are a direct challenge to the reader. He says, 'You don’t have to accept the internet as you found it. You can make something better... as a builder, as a creator, as a user, and, most important, as an owner. You are here now. These are the good old days.' Lewis: A compelling challenge indeed. Joe: This is Aibrary, signing off.