Citation: Dixon, C. (2024). Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet. Random House.
Why this book?
Dixon's New York Times bestselling book is a highly accessible read that explains the value and potential of blockchain networks. It is a call to reimagine and build a new kind of internet—one based on the free exchange of ideas, equal opportunity, and meritocracy—much like the philosophy underpinning the early internet. While corporate networks (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft) largely own the internet, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Blockchain technology and the communities emerging around it are qualitatively different from anything we have seen. Blockchains are “outside-in” technologies. Such technologies are rarely incubated in a corporation, government agency, or think-tank — and are often dismissed or underestimated by society…at first.
Inside-out technologies arrive nicely packaged, ready for the market. Outside-in technologies arrive messy, mysterious, and disguised as something else. Grasping their potential takes work. p. 229
Dixon says, “Read Write Own is a playbook for reclaiming control of the internet — starting with the key innovation of blockchains.”
Key Ideas
What is a blockchain?
Dixon recommends we think of a blockchain as a “new class of computer,” much like the iPhone is a computer. Blockchains can run software and applications. However, unlike your laptop computer, there’s nothing to log into. Blockchains are built on top of a network of physical computers that maintain the state of the virtual computer and control its transitions to new states (i.e., a transaction). Each state transition is called a block, and blocks are chained together — thus the name blockchain.
If this sounds abstract, it is. The technology introduces a new vocabulary. For now, let’s embrace the computer analogy and try to release any preconceived notions associated with crypto or coins. The transformational potential of blockchain networks goes far beyond get-rich-quick schemes (what Dixon refers to as “the casino”).
Three Internet Eras
Read (early 1990s): Some of us can remember dial-up modems and Gopher, and simply finding information that was read-only.
Write (mid1990s-mid2000s): Creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship flourished as authors, musicians, and creators of all kinds shared their work and explored new business models enabled by permissionless protocols like HTTP.
Starting in the mid-2000s, a small group of big companies wrenched control away. Today, the top 1 percent of social networks account for 95 percent of social web traffic and 86 percent of social mobile app use. … In the past decade, the five biggest tech companies grew from about 25 percent to nearly 50 percent of the market capitalization of the Nasdaq-100. (p. xiv)
Own (now-future): This era, also referred to as “web3,” is powered by blockchains and enables anyone to own, invest, create, innovate, build, and cooperate at scale.
Companies that control networks have complete control of accounts, ratings, social relationships, and more. User ownership in corporate networks is an illusion. p. 73
Trustless Large Scale Coordination
Blockchains enable coordination among people who don’t have preexisting relationships — at scale.
Everything that happens on blockchains is transparent and publicly accessible.
Blockchains are permissionless, meaning anyone with an internet connection can participate.
They employ cryptography (see vocabulary), such as zero-knowledge proofs, which enable auditing of encrypted data and mitigate the risk of illegal activities, and digital signatures to verify the authenticity and integrity of data.
For these reasons and more, blockchains need no higher central authority to oversee transactions. The software is in charge. Instructions for transactions are “baked in” and executed when specified conditions are met.
Tokens Represent Ownership
Tokens are an important concept: they represent units of ownership. Ownership equals control.
Technically, tokens are data structures that can track quantities, permissions, and other metadata for users on a blockchain.
They can represent the ownership of
Money
Art
Voting power
Game items
Code
Real-world items: physical products, dollars in the bank, concert tickets, real estate, etc.
There are fungible tokens that are interchangeable — like swapping money or coins — and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) where each token is unique — just as many objects in the real world are unique.
Traditional financial applications don’t hold money. They hold references to money, but the money itself resides somewhere else, like a bank. Money that is held and controlled by software is a new idea that didn’t exist before blockchains. (p. 150)
Why Blockchains Matter
Blockchains are democratic. They are accessible to everyone.
Blockchains are transparent. The complete history of their code and data is publicly available for anyone to inspect.
Blockchains can make strong commitments about their future behavior—that any code they run will continue to operate as designed. (p. 66-67)
Strong commitments mean that developers, creators, community members, and owners have the incentive to invest, develop, and innovate “on-chain” because the ground won’t shift beneath them arbitrarily (as with corporate networks).
Blockchain technology enables us to do things we could not before, and we are only beginning to understand the possibilities.
Conclusion
There is so much more in this book to read, learn, and contemplate. One area that fascinates me is decentralized autonomous organizations — completely new forms of organizations with governance models powered by blockchain networks. What does leadership look like in this distributed world?
One example is optimism.io, an inspiring community I follow whose open-source values and community focus resonate (see voting).
As Dixon writes, outside-in technologies require effort to learn and grasp, but they’re worth our time. According to Grandview Research, the global blockchain technology market was valued at USD 17.46 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 87.7% from 2023 to 2030. Where will you be with blockchain in five years?
It's hard for people to get excited about an abstract technology frequently described as "an immutable ledger." It was difficult for me to comprehend, too, but Dixon made the case that blockchains offer so much more than ledgers.
Can you love blockchain? Maybe so… If you are a technology, business, finance, or innovation person, I highly recommend this book.
Resources
Read Write Own Manifesto
Read this if you’re curious and want a condensed versionEthereum LearnHub
Great introductory lessons!FutureLearn Course on DAOs
(I’m enrolled now. Join me - it’s free!)
Rating (out of 4): 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟