Everything is content now
The Web 3.0 Isn’t Blockchain: It’s the Era of Content
I call Web 1.0 “the Era of Information”. It was static and you could find a lots of stuff.
Web 2.0, I call “the Era of Discussion”. Comments, likes, interaction, and a bunch more.
Web 3.0 hasn’t been defined yet. I’d like to propose “the Era of Content”.
Everyone is a creator. Everything is content.
A few years ago, the term “Web 3.0” was being tossed around in tech circles as a banner for the blockchain revolution. It was a dumb marketing ploy and it didn’t happen. Instead, we’re entering an age defined by something far more pervasive (and real): a surplus of content, information, and entertainment on a scale we’ve never seen before.
Let’s borrow a metaphor from history. Once upon a time, humanity struggled with food scarcity. Then, agriculture evolved, and suddenly we had food surplus. That surplus changed society at its core: people could do things other than just hunt or gather food.
Today, we’re living through a similar shift, except now it’s not about food, it’s about content. More content than we know what to do with – except maybe drown in it.
Two things made this possible. TikTok, and computers.
TikTok broke everything. The mold was “sure, algorithm, but maybe it should have something to do with you”. TikTok replaced it with “you can reach anyone, just dance and we’ll show it to a lot of people”. More content + more reach = more views = more money.
This shift was so successful that the entire web started chasing it. Not just Instagram and YouTube, but X/Twitter and Linked In and everyone else.
Everyone is a creator. Everything is content.
TikTok was the roadmap, but the road was increased productivity. Similar to technology enabling the food surplus, “tech” is enabling the content surplus. Computers have become pretty damn capable, and productivity in content creation has exploded. Anyone can do anything.
You’d be forgiven for thinking phones haven’t changed much in the past ten years. And yeah, sure, maybe nominal innovation isn’t what it used to be. Progress certainly is less flashy, but progress has kept progressing. And we’ve come a very long way from the “Internet Machine” from 2010. Today everyone has a freaking amazing production studio in their pocket.
Desktops, laptops, web services and infrastructure have also democratized production and distribution so much that it has changed what it means to create. It’s not that everyone could be a creator with a bit of work and the right tools. No.
Everyone is a creator. And everything is content.
Note that I didn’t mention AI here, even as I used OpenAI to draft this article. I opened a voice chat, explained my ideas and reasoning in a five minutes uninterrupted mind dump, and it came back with a very decent article that understood and explained all the core concepts. I wouldn’t even call it a draft, just a different article. In many ways it’s better: more to the point, easier to understand. I’ll include it in full below. But my point is: of course AI is accelerating all this even further, significantly. It’s making it so much easier to create stuff, to create content, it’s absurd. This is so self evident I don’t even need to say it.
Another notable change is that we no longer need long attention spans or big blocks of time. You don’t need an hour to watch a show or listen to a podcast. You don’t need ten minutes to watch something on YouTube. Content is sliced into bite-sized pieces that fill even the tiniest gaps in our day.
Got thirty seconds? Oh my, thirty seconds is so much free time! Of course we took out our phones all the time before, but that was for doomscrolling and insulting your friends. Today, thirty seconds is more than enough to consume *content*! Got thirty seconds? Read a random essay thread on Twitter! Watch three really good Reels! Open YouTube, quick, quick, there’s something there for you!
Got thirty seconds? Thirty seconds is plenty. Thirty seconds is content time.
Hell, thirty seconds might be just enough time to make content too. Cause if you do *anything* on the Internet, or outside your house (or inside your house)… well friend, you’d better start marketing yourself on all these media channels! Cause you know what, everyone else certainly is, and if you’re not you’re already losing out.
“Everyone is a creator. Everything is content.”? Pfft! That is so 2023.
2025: Everyone has to be a creator. And everything has to be content.
So Web 3.0 is the Era of Content. God only knows where it takes us.
My sense: I think people might recoil from it. It’s just too much. Don’t repeat it to anyone though. I am a content creator after all.
—
Patrick
PS: Web 1.0 is Information, 2.0 is Discussion… maybe 3.0 is “Attention”?
I really like how it refers to our attention as currency, and to attention as a core concept in LLM tech. So maybe Web 3.0 isn’t “The Era of Content”, but “The Era of Attention”?
And here is the version ChatGPT spat out:
Initial prompt:
Hey, so I would like to try something, and I want to have you write a blog article about the things I’m going to talk to you about in the style of a tech industry analyst, or maybe a LinkedIn post that should be targeted at professionals from the tech sector. And so I will tell you my thoughts, and you need to translate them into that kind of article. Does that work?
[Unfortunately the following five minute brain dump wasn’t saved as a transcript. It’s too bad, I think it would make even clearer how good a job the bot did with this article.]
Web 3.0 Isn’t Blockchain: It’s the Era of Content Surplus
For the past few years, the term “Web 3.0” has been tossed around in tech circles as a banner for the blockchain revolution. But in truth, what we’re witnessing isn’t the blockchain’s grand takeover of the internet. Instead, we’re entering an age defined by something far more pervasive: a surplus of content, information, and entertainment on a scale we’ve never seen before.
Let’s put it plainly: the idea that Web 3.0 was all about blockchain was largely a marketing construct. Crypto enthusiasts pushed this narrative because it served their interests. But the real transformation we’re seeing isn’t about blockchain tech at all. It’s about the sheer volume of content now flooding every corner of the internet.
To understand this, let’s borrow a metaphor from history. Once upon a time, humanity struggled with food scarcity. Then, agriculture evolved, and suddenly we had food surplus. That surplus changed society at its core: people could do things other than just hunt or gather food. Today, we’re living through a similar shift, except now it’s not about food—it’s about content.
Thanks to the rise of platforms like TikTok, which democratized virality and made it easy for anyone to create TV-grade engaging content, we’ve entered an era of infinite entertainment and information. Every social platform has followed suit, pivoting from being truly “social” networks to becoming content firehoses. They no longer prioritize just connecting you with friends; they prioritize flooding you with an endless stream of media. And because production tools are so accessible and productivity is so high, we’re all drowning in a sea of infinite content.
What does that mean for society? Well, we’re only beginning to understand it. Like the food surplus of old, this content surplus is freeing people from traditional media gatekeepers, but it’s also changing the nature of how we engage with information. We no longer need long attention spans or big blocks of time. Content is sliced into bite-sized pieces that fill even the tiniest gaps in our day.
In short, the Web 3.0 we’re living in isn’t the blockchain dream once pitched by crypto marketers. It’s the era of content surplus, and it’s redefining how we connect, consume, and navigate the digital world.
