The AT Protocol Harkens An Old Web Ethos

Web3, the ‘era’ of the web supposedly ushering in blockchain technologies and other such fluff, has undoubtedly been a bust. Perhaps not for the bank accounts of manipulators, but a bust in general. Blockchain has very few legitimate applications. NFTs went down like the Hindenburg, and cryptocurrencies have remained a niche with strong ties to crime and corruption. The hype-driven sham of Web3 followed Web 2.0, which did have substance. It had adjacent names such as the ‘participative web’ or the ‘social web’. It really gained popularity as a concept in the mid-2000s alongside the establishment of proper social applications like Flickr, Facebook, Last.fm, Twitter, del.icio.us, MySpace, and Foursquare. Part of the beauty of these applications was their rather open APIs. They made the web feel so alive. Fetching activity from social media and displaying it on articles, people showing their location check-ins on their sites, social bookmarking, the proliferation of RSS feeds, more…