Sharing rewarding work experiences would only deepen our bonds as members of the Pakistani IT industry and provide opportunities for learning. One such instance occurred a few days ago when a panel of intelligent individuals with the best tales gathered at NSTP for a discussion on “The Digital Creative Economy: Web 3.0,” which was organised by CxO Global Forum. When panellists have relevant expertise, aren’t hesitant to express their opinions, and have a sense of humour, panel discussions are interesting and informative. It is vital to not take oneself too seriously and to listen to your audience in order to learn just as much from them as they do from you.This one was amongst the best in a long time, and I was privileged to be a panelist.
We are in the centre of a worldwide digital creative economy storm that is being properly fed by Web 3.0. Techies enjoy jargon, and we enjoy sequencing evolution because it is organised and neat, which is how techies think. But neither life nor every developmental milestone have an acronym or catchphrase. A decade ago, Code for America’s executive director, Jennifer Pahlka, claimed that several breakthroughs inside the Web’s collective intelligence are happening concurrently and merit attention. In the past, usefulness has driven technological adoption rather than the other way around. Is this idea contradicted by Web 3.0? By virtue of the unheard-of possibilities it offers, is it advancing utility? Ironically, Covid 19, a near “Black Swan” occurrence, has been both a blessing and a curse for humanity. While countless lives are still being lost, we have learned that we can heal mother nature, and society has let go of its resistance to technology and used it successfully to adapt to a novel way of life. This was supported by the Web’s evolution, which seems to be for the better. Therefore, one may wonder “what will these new technologies imply for our enterprises, our lives, and our ecosystem?” before jumping into the Web 3.0 wave.
The panel discussion focused on how Web 3.0 is benefiting the private sector. Topics covered included cryptocurrencies and blockchain, agritech and IoT, gaming and virtual reality, AI-powered decision support, and “machine to machine” internet communication made possible by the semantic web and microformatting in combination with robust data assets. Public sector references were few and far between.
My focus is on using the power of people and technology to create a stronger, citizen-centered ecosystem of governance after making the shift from big tech and profit-making to civic tech and the non-profit diaspora. So there you have it—my interpretation of what the Digital Creative Economy and Web 3.0 imply for the purpose of Code for Pakistan.
Virtually all of the world’s data is kept by big tech, generally in closed and centralised structures, and is gatekeeping it for power and significant financial advantage. The founder of Web 3.0, Gavin Wood, claims that it offers structural changes that make the existing ecosystem obsolete by giving consumers “ownership” of data in the same way that we give ourselves ownership of physical assets.
This releases the monopoly and allows consumers to use the data in the ways that are most effective for them. A potent equation that leads to the democratization of power includes widespread access to public data, the availability of open source technologies, and a populace that is stoked by technology rather than stifled by it. It propels the citizen-government participatory process, which should lead to good governance.
All nations, with a few exceptions, struggle with good communication between the government and the populace for improved governance. Government “lingers” in the lives of residents from birth to death. The government wants to have access to all available information on its inhabitants in a safe setting, and while most people are happy to provide this information, they would prefer a painless collecting procedure. Both sides really want to work together to improve service delivery, but effective communication is frequently hampered by broken systems, inadequately working solutions, the indifference of public servants, and residents’ weariness. It is an unfair, undemocratic, and unjust master-slave relationship.
bring on Web 3.0! Web 2.0 was for people, while Web 3.0 is for data, according to critics. It goes without saying that access to data may improve both people’ lives and society as a whole, even if that is the case. Web 3.0 expedites the outcomes that the open data movement had anticipated.
It offers a way for the government to more easily enter and leave citizens’ lives. Developers may search for interesting data points and distribute these, or insights from them, to people thanks to the availability of government services and data on the web in machine-readable format. In the early wave of Govtech, searching through government websites for data was a demanding procedure. Web 3.0’s multidimensional representation gives users access to real-time information through photos, videos, and 3D virtual reality, empowering them.
The enormous amount of data has given rise to citizens’ demands for open data policies, particularly to ensure openness in how the government uses the data provided by its constituents and to make the data it owns available for analysis and use by the public.
Governments and individuals must cease pushing in opposite directions and work together to achieve this thanks to Web 3.0 and open data. Government and citizens may eliminate the master-slave relationship by working together as democratic equals and communicating in a respectful manner.
The panel covered a lot more ground, but I’ll save some of it for later. What I talked about during the panel and what I outlined above is maybe a proactive government-citizen paradise that boasts synchronised goals, immaculate execution, and iterative evaluation for improvement. I wish! Web 3.0 won’t solve all the problems, of course, and many of them are related to attitudes and vested interests, which are frequently outside the scope of technology. Lack of data cleansing makes datasets inaccurate and compromises insights; there doesn’t appear to be an agile process for independent programmers to report errors and receive prompt assistance; and many governments continue to resist the open data movement out of concern that citizens will be given the ability to publicly criticise them.
The writing is clearly on the wall, though. Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has arrived, as Victor Hugo once stated. Victor’s insight may be updated by technologists by replacing “idea” with “technology”. The moment has arrived for the powerful notion of democratic power. Fueled by the rise of the digital creative economy, the open data movement, and a generation of young people who have grown up with technology
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing”— Arundhati Roy.
