Abstract: A Web 3 Building Block

May 2022

- DRAFT -

1. Abstract (of Abstract)

An independent content building block with an integrated revenue engine and value-interconnectivity, will allow a more financially-efficient, democratic and diverse web - allowing more people to become web-creators and benefit from their own creations.

Currently, most online content is controlled solely by the companies that own the medium where it originated - tweets are owned and controlled by twitter, Google Reviews are property of Google Inc and the beautiful pictures you take each and every day are owned by Meta. This coupling is fundamentally wrong. It gives too much power to the platforms, at the expense of the content's true creators. It allows them to censor, manipulate and grow into monopolies.

The Abstract protocol, combined with Abstract’s open tool-set - are empowering the creation, consumption and exploration of these content-blocks (or “Abstracts”) - Cultural digital objects that are free for everyone to create, consume, invest and build-upon.

Abstract allows any cultural object to attribute other cultural objects, creating an ever-existing value chain that benefits past creators with a portion of the success of new creations based on their work.

This new building block, network and model will place foundations for the next generation of web - commonly named web3  - a creators’ centric network open for all to advance and nurture.

2. Introduction

1. Web 1  >  Web 2  >  Web 3
   

1. Web 1: Read -
   where it all began, Tim Barnes Lee
   

[The early internet (1980s-2000s) was built on top of a series of open protocols like HTTP (websites) and SMTP (email). It was largely decentralised: users could trust that these protocols wouldn’t change and could build sites and services on top of them with no intermediation by a third party. However, building required technical skills, and it was hard to attract an audience. Web1.0 was niche.]

Web 1.0 is a retronym referring to the first stage of the World Wide Web's evolution, from roughly 1991 to 2004. According to Graham Cormode and Balachander Krishnamurthy, "content creators were few in Web 1.0 with the vast majority of users simply acting as consumers of content".[13] Personal web pages were common, consisting mainly of static pages hosted on ISP-run web servers, or on free web hosting services such as Tripod and the now-defunct GeoCities.[14][15] With Web 2.0, it became common for average web users to have social-networking profiles (on sites such as Myspace and Facebook) and personal blogs (sites like Blogger, Tumblr and LiveJournal) through either a low-cost web hosting service or through a dedicated host. In general, content was generated dynamically, allowing readers to comment directly on pages in a way that was not common previously.[citation needed]

2. [“The Web happened because of the history of microprocessors and telecommunications and wartime industry and commercial requirements, and a bunch of different discoveries and patents and corporate research funds and academic papers and TBL’s own family history; but it also happened because it was Web Time: for a brief moment, the dispositions of culture and technology converged on an invention that, in hindsight, was predicted by everything from ancient Chinese encyclopaedias to microfilm retrieval to the stories of Jorge Luis Borges. The Web was necessary, and so it appeared – in this timeline, at least.”

-Excerpt From: James Bridle. “New Dark Age.” Apple Books. ]

3. Moore’s law is breaking down -
4. Web 2: Write - 

- Short history of web2
- what went wrong with web 2? Hyper-growth on losing units
- The inevitable melting of web2

[The internet as we know it today is Web2.0 (2000s-2020s). Centralised companies like Facebook and Google solved these problems by allowing non-technical users to create pages, share photos and text, search, message friends and colleagues, share files and more. They wrapped the Web1.0 protocols in delightful user interfaces, trading off decentralisation and ownership for utility and distribution.]

Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory)[1] web and social web)[2] refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and devices) for end users.

5. The term was coined by Darcy DiNucci in 1999[3] and later popularized by Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty at the first Web 2.0 Conference in late 2004.[4][5][6] Although the term mimics the numbering of software versions, it does not denote a formal change in the nature of the World Wide Web, but merely describes a general change that occurred during this period as interactive websites proliferated and came to overshadow the older, more static websites of the original Web.[7]
6. A Web 2.0 website allows users to interact and collaborate with each other through social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community. This contrasts the first generation of Web 1.0-era websites where people were limited to viewing content in a passive manner. Examples of Web 2.0 features include social networking sites or social media sites (e.g., Facebook), blogs, wikis, folksonomies ("tagging" keywords on websites and links), video sharing sites (e.g., YouTube), image sharing sites (e.g., Flickr), hosted services, Web applications ("apps"), collaborative consumption platforms, and mashup applications.
7. Whether Web 2.0 is substantially different from prior Web technologies has been challenged by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, who describes the term as jargon.[8] His original vision of the Web was "a collaborative medium, a place where we [could] all meet and read and write".[9][10] On the other hand, the term Semantic Web (sometimes referred to as Web 3.0)[11] was coined by Berners-Lee to refer to a web of content where the meaning can be processed by machines.[12]
   
   
8. Web 3: Semantic, Decentralized..? Web 3 current state (a.k.a infancy): NFTs, Tokens etc. - Elon buying Twitter…
   
   Open sea
   
   
   
   
   

2. Web3.1 (aka matured web3) - Shifting ownership and monetization between “Read” and “Write”
   
3. Abstract - A decoupling of Read and Write, by creating digital content objects with built-in independent value-generation.
   

The first time I encountered “Abstractization” as a kid

3. Digital Content Objects

1. What is a Cultural Object?

1. A cultural object, according to UNESCO heritage is anything created by humans that encompasses all tangible & corporeal objects that are created, used, kept, and left behind by past and present cultures.
2. How can the digital media, data, information, and knowledge begin to create a better understanding of the world around us? The age of cybernetics is here, because the drive will come from participation → and here is the key to participation = incentive.

2. Paaattrriickk… pssstt…. :) hahaha hi

3. Hi :) it’s a bit disturbing right…?
4. It’s holiday.
5.  Go home. :) :) ok lol just finishin my archaeology note
6. HAHA haha :) bye.
7. Bye :) have a food weekend

9. Is anything a cultural object?

10. Spime + integrated value engine

11. deconstruction of physical objects with digital information, broadly classified into three layers of abstraction:

1. the Physical Object Layer
2. the Information Storage and Retrieval Layer
3. the Wide Area Access Layer

12. How/will it interact with the ioT blockchain?

4. Integrated Value Reactor

1. Each content object has its own Token
   

5. Value Chain by exchanging “mass” and “matter”

1. Pools

2. Smart router

3. “Spime” with an integrated business model

4. A new material to create tools from. Stone > Iron > Silicon > Abstract

5. The “Abstract Age”
   

6. Types of citations:

1. Authorship

2. Reference

3. Inspiration

4. Quote

5. Proof

6. Disproof

7. Mention

8. Context - geographic, time, place

9. Participants

10. Funding

11. Manufactured in

12. Ingredients

13. Subpart of
14. Constructed from
15. Certified by
16. Certificating
17. Historical state
18. Others… (it should be extendable)

7. Hash Factory

1. Uniqueness of content

2. Authorship of content
   

8. Moving Parts

1. Protocol
2. Creator
3. Viewer
4. Explorer
5. SDK
6. Infrastructure

9. Explorer

1. What is Knowledge Explorer? Any software that allows exploration of content objects - through search or curation. Abstract provides a basic Knowledge explorer that uses KQL (Knowledge Query Language)

2. KQL - Knowledge Query Language
3. Third Party explorers
4. SDK
5. The importance of multiple explorers

10. Viewer

11. Creator

1. Free, public and decentralized “Registrar of Ideas”

2. “3D printing of brain cells” use-case.
   

12. Network

13. Incentive

14.  Abstract as layer 1
    
    Abstract can be based on many existing layer 1 networks such as Etherium, but it also has an integrated natural potential to become its own layer 1.
    
    A major problem with the current layer 1 networks is the waste of work and resources needed for the “Proof of Work” or for the “Proof of Stake” to become a trustful validator.
    
    With Abstract, the geometry of the content itself - different digital content objects connected to each other by citations - generates “cultural value” for each object and its authors. An abstract that is linked by many other abstracts is probably “important”. If the abstracts linking to it are also widely cited - it’s probably even more important. With this “object rank” model, similar to “page rank” - The network can rely on these important abstracts as trustworthy, providing their authors “acknowledgment of work” instead of “proof-of-work”. Another way to look at it is as “Proof of an intellectual stake”. There is also a potential penalty for a dishonest validator - losing some of his rating of acknowledgment.  Formula:   Papers that cite you * honesty (which is by default 1)

15. Roles and Value

1. Explorer / Reader

2. New Knowledge Miner / Author

3. Old knowledge Miner / Archaeologist

4. Activator

5. Investor

6. Validator

7. Protocol Developer

8. Tool Developer
   

16. A Toolset for hackers
    

Mark Zuckerberg is known for the hacking culture he confers on his employees – rebelling against authority, building new things, and finding tricks or bypasses. The problem with Facebook is that this culture remains only inside the company and development teams.

The users themselves, meaning all of us, are given no room for “hacks.” If you have a Facebook profile and you revolt or upload unusual content, there’s a chance your account will get deleted. The ability to change and develop your Facebook profile, in ways that are yet to be developed, does not exist.

A natural evolution and development cannot exist with such narrow options. There is no room for new iterations and being cutting-edge. It does not allow for the necessary diversity needed to create a true city. This is the problem with Facebook.

17. Conclusions
    

18. Future

1. When you take a picture in your favorite social network, you contribute your content for free to the company that operates it - Let’s say Meta (or Google, or Twitter etc..) . They use it internally, without allowing anyone else to access it. Most of the revenues generated by this new piece of content go towards their growth aspirations. With Abstract - the image you are taking becomes an independent cultural object, owned by you - its humble creator. Networks can exhibit and curate this content, but it remains open, accessible and owned by you. You, or others - can take this picture and grow it into a review. Someone used it? You’ll get some of the value created through the value-link automatically created as your cultural object was used.
   
   The next social network will provide tools with which it will be possible to create endless variations – variations the original creators of the network could have never dreamt of. That’s where the magic is going to happen; where the masses will create perpetual diversity and disruption, effectively avoiding Facebook’s fate. After all, how can you disrupt a network that is
   disrupting itself?
   

19. References

Sterling, Bruce, Lorraine Wild, and Peter Lunenfeld. Shaping Things. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2005. Print.

Nakamoto, S. (2008) Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Berners-Lee Tim. Information Management: A Proposal. CERN, March 1989, May 1990

Ronfeldt David. Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2005/P7967.pdf 1995

Tung-Hui Hu. A Prehistory of the Cloud. MIT Press. 2016.

“Paul Baran and the Origins of the Internet” https://www.rand.org/about/history/baran.list.html 1996

Barlow John P. A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. https://www.eff.org/de/cyberspace-independence 1996

[stick charts reference: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-sticks-and-shell-charts-became-sophisticated-system-navigation-180954018/

https://decolonialatlas.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/micronesian-stick-charts/]

The Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum: With Lovable, Furry Old Grover

Niranjan Kundapur. On Integrating Physical Objects With the Internet. https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/89297/48379679-MIT.pdf

20. Notes:

A prehistory of DAOs - explaining steps being taken in web3.0

Composability - A platform is composable if its existing resources can be used as building blocks and programmed into higher order applications. Composability is important because it allows developers to do more with less, which in turn, can lead to more rapid and compounding innovation.

Semantic web info from w3.org - discussing linked data (Tim Berners-Lee’s concept), queries, inference, vocabularies, and vertical applications

Tim Berners-Lee’s current projects at MIT - Solid Inrupt

Examples:

Abstract Car:

Abstract Car has its own Abstract - cultural and financial digital representation - that cites using “contain relationship” each one of its parts. Each part has its own abstract. These abstracts includes:

1. A 3D blue-print of the part - for future manufacturing / 3d printing
2. Citation of possible materials to construct from
3. Citation of authors and contributors
4. Meta data (when it was created, where etc.)
5. 2-way Citation of its Certificates and approved standards
6. It’s own Token

Not a tesla model 3

Let’s imagine Tesla model 3 as an abstract car - it means the entire car, including all its technologies is available for all. A small manufacturer can use these in its own car - by citing these parts. If he’ll become successful, Tesla will gain value automatically - without any need for specific business-terms. It’s an open-source car with built-in financial zero-mediators, zero-waste mechanism. The composability of this car is not just in content and technology, but also a “Financial Composability”.

Abstract Dish:

You’ve ordered a dish in a Michelin starred restaurant. What are you eating? What are the ingredients? Is the recipe public? Is it homage to a traditional meal? We’re very ignorant regarding the source, value and history of our food - even if consumed in high-end restaurants. An abstract dish will include all the above information, with Abstractization to ingredients.

When you pay for the dish a value is being distributed to all its suppliers - both physical suppliers and intellectual suppliers.

Abstract Software:

Abstract software will spread value to all it’s abstract open-source software it uses. It’s an efficient and elegant solution that allows the availability of open source - but in a sustainably financial way.

Abstract House:

I just bought a house. What is its energy rating? Which parts can be more efficient?
I need to make a paint repair - Which exact color was used for the walls?

Can I see the most recent inspection? Invoices of work done in the house?

A clear list of taxes?

Wanna buy? Sell? The Title is embedded in the Abstract of this house - no intermediaries are needed.

Abstract Community Projects:

Abstract community projects will break down and deconstruct environmental projects like the redesign of the Los Angeles river. It will be implemented in participatory design processes that will involve the community’s perspective, through incentivizing collections of thoughts, ideas, and verifications. Right now there is a barrier to true community involvement in environmental projects, like rivers, that will affect those up and down the river. In order to make sure that a design has longevity for everyone affected, there needs to be a way to collect and relate information that is publicly accessed and created (through shared databases, interface technologies, and simulations). In order to do that, there has to be a peer to peer incentive for participation.