 Let me welcome everybody. Welcome to the Future Transform. I'm delighted to see you here today. We have a great guest on a very important subject and we have a lot of questions and a lot of ideas. We've been looking at Web 3 and what that might mean for some time. In fact, we've been looking at it since it was before Web 3. We've been trying to think about it in terms of this massive overlap. On the one side, you have virtual reality. On the other side, the decentralized Web of Blockchain and Bitcoin and all that good stuff. How does this work? What does it mean for higher education? How does an academic engage with all this and should we? Well, I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Michael Cohen. He's known as the tech rabbi and he does a lot of great work with helping people be creative, helping them learn together and be productive together. And he is a Web 3 guru. He is someone I'm very, very excited to join. In fact, let me just bring him up on stage without any further ado. And also, let me just welcome his immense and splendid beard. Hello, Michael. Hi, how are you? Great to be here. Great. Good to see you. Good to see you. In fact, just to maximize our hair suit appreciation, let me just get this maximum screen size. Where are you coming to us today from, Michael? I am based in Miami right now. Long time SoCal residents that just relocated there in August. So coming from really good weather right now. Yes, Miami spring is really, really nice before the humidity kicks in. Yes. Well, I'm glad to hear you. I'm glad to have you here and we have all kinds of questions. But before we go further, we ask people to introduce themselves in a particular way. We like to ask people to explain what they're going to be doing for the next year. What are the big topics, the ideas, the big projects that are top of mind for you? What are you going to be working on for 2022 and into 2023? I like that. So a big focus right now for myself and the work in Web 3. And it really is all about Web 3. There was a big pivot for me last June to really immerse myself and explore this space. And I'm right now at the point where I am attempting to go all in on it. So we have two different pretty significant projects that we are working on right now. The first is the ed3dow. It is the first dow for educators by educators. And we are really looking at trying to reimagine not just what education looks like, but what does the future of education companies look like? And how can educators unite their skills, their expertise, their capacities to impact education at scale and to be rewarded in many ways for the efforts and the time that they put into that. We're also launching a project called ed3educators NFT, which is going to be a NFT token that will give educators and those that are passionate about educators an opportunity to engage in three really important experiences. One being our ed3 conference in what we're calling the eduverse. A Web 3 certification and upskilling for educators to not just be able to educate their students on the future of the internet, but to be able to actually become participants in the Web 3 ecosystem that desperately needs educators that understand how to communicate information to others, especially complex types of information. So those are two huge projects. And then for me on a personal note, really trying to explore ways that Web 3 can scale intentionally because I might be someone that is a believer of Web 3, but only with intentionality. And so I am trying to actually dissuade people from wasting time and resources trying to be Web 3 for Web 3's sake. So that's a little hobby of mine right now in both education and in industry. Well, that sounds like an awful lot of work and great stuff. In the chat, people have shared a couple of links already, which is terrific. And thank you. That sounds like a great mission for the next year. Good luck. Good luck with all of that. It may be that March 2023 we bring you back to follow up and see how things have gone. I don't know. There are all kinds of questions that people are going to have. And let me just say just to begin with, I'm going to ask the TechRap by a couple of basic questions to get all of you stoked and excited and thinking about this. But then I'm going to get out of the way. And this will be for you. I guess my first question is, I define Web 3. I define as having two parts together. One is the VR helmet, the VR part of it. And the other is the blockchain component to it. And I'm curious, in your estimation, does that match up with your understanding or is it mostly on the blockchain side of it? I think it's both. The virtual reality element of it still needs some work. I don't know many people that spend six to eight hours a day living, working in virtual reality. There's still a human imbalance in the way that we are virtually engaged, but not quite physically engaged. That can lead to nausea, discomfort, dizziness, things of that nature. So we have to figure out how to solve that. There's also a serious equity issue. Does everybody have access to a $300 headset, even the Oculus Quest, which I think is $199? So cheaper price point, need high-speed internet, need to have stuff to set up for your whole family. If everyone needs a headset, so we're getting there. But I think there's other ways to experience Metaverse without virtual reality. But I think it is definitely a 50-50 share between Metaverse and blockchain. But it's really about access, experience, and ownership. Those are the three core areas of Web 3 that will probably change over time how we apply those. But those are the real core elements that are hopefully going to be different than the Web 1 and Web 2 predecessors of the internet. Well, this is a question that's come from the chat already. Tom and Lisa, I feel there's been batting this back and forth. Hal Hopner has come into this. You define this as a combination of experience, access, and ownership. Doesn't Web 1.0 and also Web 2.0 give this? I mean, the Web has access to obviously huge numbers of people around the world. It provides quite an experience. And people get to own different parts of it. I'm personally a big fan of Jim Groome's hosting service, reclaim hosting. I mean, this is in many ways a provocative question. It sounds like we already have those three things in other words. Why upgrade to Web 3? How does that improve things? So there are elements of Web 3 that are naturally going to have to be built off of Web 1 and Web 2 because we only have Web 3 because we know what we did wrong in Web 1 and Web 2. So Web 1 is just consumption. It was about organizing the scope of human knowledge in a way that it could be accessible for all. And in some ways, that was achieved. In other ways, we do know that depending on where you live geographically, your Google search will decide what type of information they are going to show you when you are searching the same type of query. So there is a centralized control over the access of the form of information depending on where you are, depending on your search history. Even just yesterday, I saw a colleague looking up something around TED Talks. And I said, oh, you should check out this TED Talk from Nancy Duarte. And he struggled to find it. And I wondered why. Oh, it's because my search history is tailored to the pattern of words and queries that I am constantly engaging in. So my search for this is different. And then ownership. We do not own as much of the internet as we think we do. My social media community is not owned by me. It's owned by Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube and Google. So they decide one day, you know, the tech rabbi, you've given us 10, 11 years of time and content on Twitter, but for some reason we're just not interested any longer in allowing you to communicate on this platform. And 11 years of my community building, my idea sharing, my exciting back and forth with people sparking exciting conversations is gone. And so that ownership piece is not necessarily about the vehicles in which we experience the information, but it's about owning our data, allowing our data to move around and be carried from site to site. My LinkedIn can't go to my YouTube. Your Shinde can't go to your YouTube without many different processes and permissions from these centralized entities that decide how, when, and why information should be existing, public, and transported to wherever it needs to be. So I would say right now we're honestly in Web 2.1. We're on our Web 2 devices, on our Web 2 apps talking about Web 3. We're not in Web 3 yet. Web 3 still will take some time. But it's really about looking at ways in which immersive experiences where people have control over where they go, what they do with their data and how they are able to control that information through blockchain technology is what really will usher in Web 3. So one major takeaway is that blockchain is the key here in a lot of ways. And that you're pointing out that one of the problems is, of course, that these giant platforms which we are dependent on are, of course, independent of us and they can do whatever they like. And I'm sure we've all experienced this kind of problem before. We have just friends, we have a whole bunch of questions and comments in the chat from great folks. Hal Hepner, Jonathan Parts, Simone Ravioli. I'm sorry, Simone, if I mispronounce it, Ravioli. And of course, the excellent Maria Anderson. If you'd like to, if you want me to hoist one of those questions up, I can do it. But also just type it in the Q&A box or join us on stage. Those are the best ways. And just to get things, get things rolling even further, I'm going to bring my good friend Tom Haymes up on stage. And we will try as polite gentlemen not to make fun of his horribly exposed chin. So let's bring Tom a good friend. Look at that. Look at that. Oh, the shame. No, no. I can speak through. No, there's a beard under here, honest. Hello, Tom. Hello, Houston. Hello. So my question is this. I mean, we, some of us have been around this block a few times already. You know, a lot of the stuff that you're saying about web three is stuff that Tim Berners-Lee wrote in, you know, the early 1990s, mid 1990s about what he saw, you know, reweaving the web, for instance, you know, about what he saw as web 1.0. And he was disappointed by, and right on cue there goes my dog. He was disappointed by the fact that people didn't grasp this technology and use it. Well, for those of us who were the early pioneers, you know, you recognize the pioneers from the arrows in their back. It was hard to use it, right? So you had facilitators come along. The, you know, you had Google come along to help you organize it. You had WordPress or other authoring tools, ultimately other WordPress technically is web 2.0. But I mean, other kinds of authoring tools. I don't remember that far back. But, you know, to help you build it, you didn't have to write HTML code. You didn't have to have a web 2.0 file. You didn't have to have a web 2.0 file to build a website to do web 2.0. You had to have a web 2.0. You know, you didn't need to have a web 2.0. You had to have a web 3.0. So that's kind of a thing weaver, okay? But, you know, at the end of the day, what happened is that people came in and wanted a simplistic on ramp to these things. And that led to ultimately Facebook and other web 2.0 platforms which made all this easier to engage with. What's the stop web 3 from doing the same thing and then be centralized It's a great point because one of the challenges in this space is that we have dreamers. We have incredible minds that really see the opportunity, but there is a light-year space between those dreamers and mass adoption. When I look at companies like General Magic, inventing the iPhone or really the first dynamic smartphone was almost a decade before the iPhone was released. It was too early and it wasn't created with humans in mind. It's that people over product, product over people kind of challenge and what social media did was it appeared that it was putting people before the technology. It was focused on bringing meaning into the lives of people. And while I have major gratitude for these pioneers and we have to appreciate the progression, but Web2 companies have become so powerful that they are really able to decide the destiny of the internet and what is quote unquote right for the future. So I think that right now we are still very early for Web3. I think that there are things that will happen over the next 24 months where people will try like pets.com. Everyone make a website. So now it's like let's get everything on the blockchain. It's just an absolute waste of time and it won't actually bring value for the human beings that we are trying to support. It's putting product before people. And so we'll see that happen. And I'm okay with Web4 as well. It might not have a 20-year stand like we see from Web2 to where we are right about now. I think that it's an opportunity for us to look at the ability for people to have more control only because the internet has moved to where it was. You couldn't do a Web3 five, 10, 15 years ago because you didn't have this viral connection of a global society that not only could congregate but could create on the internet. And so even from 2017 until now, when you look at really one of the largest moments of adoption of cryptocurrency of blockchain, why did it crash so bad and then drag for basically three years? Because it didn't have enough builders, not enough application. It was still in many cases a pipe dream but it was those dreamers trying to imagine but right now there are people building in these systems in really significant ways. But we do have to be conscious of not just the companies but even the investors. The creators of the board APIOT club, the most successful NFT project to date that also bought the second and third most popular NFT project to date just finished a seed round of $450 million that was run by A16Z. And so we're like, okay, Web3, decentralization. What does that mean? People are struggling with that. Right. I mean, the on-ramp again, NFTs are a great example. The people who are making money off of NFTs, really making money off of NFTs are the brokers who are providing that on-ramp to people because they're like, oh, I should buy one of these. But I don't know how. Oh, I'll help you with that, right? And that's how you get, I should get in this conversation that's going on Facebook. It's the same story from 20 years ago. I should get in this conversation that's going on Facebook. Oh, only colleges. Oh, we'll let you in. Come on. We'll help you with that. We'll help you get into this conversation. But I'm already seeing that happening here is my point. And I'm not sure. I really don't know how you're going to maneuver through that or Web3 is going to maneuver through that because there's already a built-in bias. The barriers to entry to the people who already know how to manipulate the system are as low as everybody else's and they have more resources. You're not wrong. I am still actually myself trying to figure out how to navigate through this. But I think there are opportunities right now to look at the technology. And obviously you need a moment like prior to Pokemon Go, it took me five minutes to explain augmented reality to people. And they still looked at me like, what are you talking about? And then Pokemon Go is like, bam, OK, there it is. That's augmented reality. You know, we're done. So NFT is as whatever people feel about right-click, save as JPEGs. It is a very simple and visual way to demonstrate the power of smart contract technology that I'm more excited about the $100 NFT that actually just gives you something real and authentic utility than the idea that right now I have a NFT that's called a Doodle, the top 10 NFT. And they're considering building a theme park to compete against Disneyland. Now, that's a huge bet. That is a crazy wild idea. But if that actually happens, so then those early adopters end up being early investors in the future of digital and in real life kind of XR mixed reality entertainment and like that might work. But then how many of those can you have? You're going to have 100 new theme parks open. No, that's silly. So the NFT technology needs to permeate into a little bit less hype about becoming a millionaire off of a $300 JPEG you bought. But that kind of hype and craziness will, I think usher in people being a little bit more thoughtful about, well, this technology does work, the royalties, the security, the authenticity, the transferability. So how do we just like use this in a regular way for our Costco membership and our library card, just basic things in our lives? Yeah, I got two words for you, Brian, and I'll get off your Beard NFT. Thank you. Thank you so much. Bored Beard NFT, perhaps, or Beard Club. Seriously, Tom, thank you for that question. And Michael, thank you for that very, very thoughtful answer. The Costco connection, I think, is a nice one to think about. Friends, if you're new to the forum, that's an example of a video question where we just brought Tom up on stage. Now let me give you an example of a text question. This is from Ray Garcelon. Hello, Ray. Let me flash this on the screen for everybody. Is your work signed? Oh, hang on a second. I need to read this myself. Is that a little too small to read? Let me just bring this up. Is your work aligned or associated with either of these initiatives? Tim Berners-Lee's solid? Or that's the first one that he's asking about. Is your work aligned with Tim Berners-Lee's solid project? So not in an official capacity. I think in general, what's beautiful about Web 3 is that people sort of like the initiation of just open source collaborating and software development. People share and people are open to uplifting others. But I am not an official collaborator. But if you're connected and you want to make an intro, please. I'm sure I actually haven't looked into connecting with solid, so I can't point you that way. But that's definitely a major project. And of course, Sir Tim is one of the great humans of our time. Ray also followed that up and I'm sorry, I missed it with asking if you're also involved in the W3C contract for the Web. So that is something that we are learning from when we are looking at the Dow that we're building. So the Ed 3 Dow team members, some of them are much more involved. I don't think we have anybody on the level of a contributor, but we are constantly referencing them as we should. They have been a standard for education and best practice for the web since really probably its inception. But I don't go that far back, but I have known them since high school. So it's someone that we're constantly looking towards just to make sure that we want to be able to build on this Web 3 potential. But we want to do it in a way that gives credence to those that came before us, but also ensures that we are building as much as we might be dismantling, but making sure that we're building with the right people. That's a good general approach, I think. And Ray, thank you for the excellent, excellent question. So now you've all seen how to ask a video question and how to ask a text question. Now we're going to bring up another video question from our excellent friend, occasional co-host and great CEO and great futurist, let me bring up Maria Anderson. Hello, Maria. Hey, Brian. How are you doing? I'm good. No beard, though. Sorry. I know. I know. We'll still let you up. OK. I'm going to come next time with a beard just to. I live for that. OK. I'm just kind of reflected here on some older technology that I don't actually know if I have a question. Sorry, I never technically said I did, but I'm just reflecting here on some older technology and how long it took to get it into the mainstream. So the one I was thinking about in particular is QR codes. You know, I first saw QR codes at a conference back in maybe 2009. And I remember bringing it back in a faculty development saying, like, look, I think this is going to be really cool. It has a lot of, you know, uses. And, you know, we saw like little bits and pieces of QR codes up until three things, I think happened. One, it became really hard to log into TV services. And a much easier way was to point your phone at the QR code, right? Which most people would rather do rather than typing on the little keyboard on the TV, right? To Venmo, everybody's got to pay each other in Venmo. And it's much easier to pull up the QR code than to search, right? And then three, COVID happened and all the restaurant menus went to QR codes, right? And so I think the general population now understands QR codes and what they are and what they do with it. But they've been around for, you know, one or two decades, right? At least maybe longer than that. I just learned about them in 2009, right? And I kind of feel like Web, the blockchain and NFTs and the metaverse is going to have a similar slow, unless there is a black swan event that really pushes it to the forefront, like all the banks in the world fail because they weren't on a blockchain or something, right? Like unless there's some kind of really major event that pushes them and the need for it to the forefront, I don't think we're going to see a fast adoption similar because nobody can explain in one sentence what a blockchain is, right? Or why it's useful to you. It takes like an hour of really carefully planned and the average population isn't going to listen to that, right? Like they don't care, right? And then I don't know that the NFT what we see right now in NFTs, I don't know that that's really turning the general population to love, you know, the blockchain and because they're like people are paying millions of dollars for pixels, like that's what that's what, you know, you feel like most people have millions of dollars, right? It's like a rich person thing, like waste your money on some art, right? And so I don't I just don't see how we're going to shift the general population to being excited about these things. I think they'll probably start, you know, I think the back end technology will start to improve where it has to improve for security and for, you know, certain types of job applications and things like that. But I just I don't think we're yet to a what I've seen as a really clever, classy way to introduce this to the general population yet. I think it'll come. But I don't think it's in the next 12 to 24 months. Bari, Plaque's one of it. Yeah, a lot of why that was like, that was a lot of really great insight. I'm trying to like, OK, where do I start? Because you said QR code and then all I could think about as you were describing the QR code was the coin based commercial for the Super Bowl that was a old school DVD, you know, the thing bouncing from corner to corner. And it was a QR code and everyone was like, what in the world is this? And I was screaming at my my my father, scan that right now. It caused the coin based app to not only crash, it brought 10 million people onto the app within one minute. And it became from like top 200 app to top three app within 45 seconds. So the QR code is an interesting piece of technology because the way you described it was the tech capacity. You used to have to download a QR code app and then you open it. And then it just became part of your your camera. Now your your camera default on your on your phone just scans it. Then what was really the the event that I think made it the less of the of the sillier technologies was once again, people before product purpose. And so by being able to quickly access a menu, you just saw many more people saying, oh, like this this makes sense. This helps me. Is it a revolutionary piece of technology? But people might not appreciate that unless you're super nerdy. But in general, QR codes are something that, like you said, never really quite quite took off. Now, whether or not there's a black swan event, I think that there's a couple of things about NFTs specifically that people have to appreciate. So the first is that when you look at web to companies, right? Like, you know, Brian Armstrong founds coin base. He sends Gary Tan, who's a venture capitalist in in the Bay Area, an email with one Bitcoin and says, hey, I'm doing this thing. Would you like to be a part of it? So in 10 years, his $250,000 investment became $1 billion. It was a direct when they went public, it was a direct listing. So they had to sell stock to create liquid liquidity. So he made a billion dollars. So 10 years, $250,000 becomes $1 billion. So when you look at the NFTs, you have to look at some of these projects, not all of them. So there is some hype, some FOMO and some people that are going to carry the financial bag for those that are a little bit more, you know, financially savvy or even nefarious. But there are actual authentic projects like Ford Apes, for example, because that's probably one that would reference a million dollar NFT sale. So most of those people were betting on the future. They were spending only $800 for a silly JPEG of a monkey wearing a hat smoking a cigarette with the idea that they might be able to create the next big internet company. But no one really knew what exactly was going to happen just a year ago. And here we are a year later. Not only are there individuals investing, there is large scale VC firms investing, there are companies investing. There's companies buying NFT companies that like Nike and Adidas. But one of the things that is not quite true about the space that the media really portrays and what most people that are not, you know, as as obsessively immersed in this is maybe someone like myself, is that there are plenty of projects right now. I just minted two that were focused on women in tech empowerment and funding opportunities for upskilling, for training, for events, focused on women being successful in in the in they said Web 3, but it's like being successful in tech. So my three hundred dollars could do one of two things. It could allow me to help move forward this important mission. And if I can get some sort of utility and some sort of benefit and other people want to be a part of it, maybe I'll sell one of the two that I minted. But that's a relatively easy entry point for people and it has an impact. And in this case, I happen to know the creator. There is a utility. So the NFTs aren't just about buying pixels. It's about buying the opportunity to have a virtual and an in real life access and experience. So this could be access to events, conferences, networking, mastermind groups, even some actually are creating opportunities for upskilling and even job placement. So we're very early. And so that means that there is silliness. There is poor financial decisions. But I think that at the end of the day right now, there is an opportunity for people to create an impact. And I'll just finish off with I think one of the most powerful things so far that I've seen in the NFT space, which is that during this war right now in Ukraine, where the banks have been destroyed, it is impossible to get fiat currency to people in need. There was a group that decided we're going to raise funds through crypto and they raised $10 million in 45 seconds for non-profits and organizations that were going to support the Ukrainian people. And it was delivered directly to them in less than 10 minutes. Find that happening without blockchain and without crypto in an honest and transparent way that every single dollar spent can be shown where it went to. That doesn't exist prior to blockchain. I think that's a good example of the crypto doing good. I just can't help but I don't know. Have either of you guys listened to the Crypto Queen podcast? I haven't. I'll take a note though. You really should. Because it's like the dark side of crypto and what happens if somebody. How little people understand about the actual crypto. And sending millions of people to download Coinbase is great and all. But having listened to the Crypto Queen, I also can't help but wonder how many people are going to also lose their shirts. Investing in cryptos that aren't actually very solid or well because you believe all sorts of stuff. Hundred percent. Yeah, almost right. Fear of missing out. You have that with penny stocks. You have that with investments, time immortal, right? Investing in crude oil, you know, there's plenty of. And there will be their own snake oil investments, right? Yeah, there will be regulation coming for better or for worse, but there will be better. There needs to be a regulation similar to 2017 with the ICOs, right? Initial coin offerings, trying to circumvent securities to build companies and build out funding through that way. So that not only trashed and really slandered the industry and the technology, but it was addressed. So there will be a correction of that in the next year or so as the IRS is for sure busy with the SEC, figuring out exactly how to both take care of some of the dishonesty, but also hopefully it will protect those that do not have financial literacy and experience from making poor decisions. So I think actually your example of the Ukraine donations actually brings up something quite interesting, which is whether non-profits maybe should shift to using a blockchain oriented donation so that people can ensure that their money goes where they think it's going. Right? I mean, there's some sense that that could be the first student we talked about QR codes and how they finally became mainstream. This idea that you know where your money is going, you know, if only you could know where each of your tax dollars actually lands. Right? My taxes went a hundred percent through the military this year. You know, like I wonder how we'd feel if we could actually see every dollar we put in and where it went, right? Yeah, that would be a huge step. I think we may have just found a major use for Web 3 right now, even these early days. Maria, I can I can host you up here forever, but we've got a stack of questions coming in so much. Thank you. And Michael, thank you for for that short essay of responses. Again, I appreciate your candor and your ability to speak directly to this. We have a question that has been asked by about four different people, including by Alexis, and I want to flash it up on the screen from one person. Just but this is a common concern. How do you respond to the issue of environmental impact of blockchain technology? That's Hal Heppner. And I think this is coming largely from the Bitcoin mining process, which uses a tremendous amount of electricity, but also other aspects of blockchain. How do you respond? How are you to how are we going to take care of this? So it's it's important to note that there are there are significant impacts to the environment. And anyone that says or tries to really mitigate the impact, they're not being honest. But at the same time, we have to understand a couple of different elements of what this technology will hopefully be able to do as it evolves. So the first thing is that the two biggest blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum are the largest consumers of electricity and other resources. Now, there are two elements to this that hopefully will be resolved, but also just to be acknowledged. Number one is is that when when we paint, you know, crypto as this, you know, money focused industry. So fine, but then we have to do it across the board, which means we have to assume that people are trying to make as much money as possible. So they are trying to locate in areas with much cheaper electricity per kilowatt. Well, why would electricity be cheaper in certain areas than other areas? Well, it is because there is an abundance of energy being stored in those areas. It could be from coal. It could also be from hydro. It can be from wind. It can be from solar. And so most and also geothermal, many large scale mining companies want to have little to no cost associated with running their machine operation. And so they are trying to find those places, which is why there was such a large concentration in China up to 60 percent of the Bitcoin blockchain was located in China. Why? Because China built these massive cities that unfortunately did not populate as they imagined they would. So they had huge solar wind and hydro electric support that these crypto mining companies were making use of. So there isn't as much dirty energy, especially coal, as many people say. It really is true. And now for what I when I do engage directly in this kind of conversation, I say I won't use research from Bitcoin magazine, but you have to make sure to not use resources that are more on the opposite end of the extreme. We have to come to a central common belief, which is, yes, electricity is being used, which is having massive impacts on the internet if it's not renewable. But where are these two large block chains going? And where is blockchain technology at large going? So Ethereum this summer, hopefully, I mean, we keep saying this summer. We said that last summer is moving to proof of state, which means that it will require up to 95, some even saying 98 percent less energy to secure and verify transactions, because it no longer is using the mathematical power to stabilize the network and then keep track of the information on the network. So the network will have stabilized and they'll move to a proof of state. Bitcoin will also move there, but it probably will take a few years. But we're not going to see this as like, well, this is going to take 10 years. No, it won't. And the past 10 years haven't had the level of concentration that we have seen in 2017, then dropped significantly and now is back up in 2020 to 2022. So it's like we've had 10 years of this technology wreaking havoc. But it does have impact, but it is short term. When you look at between now and the future. Now, current blockchains have made these decisions and it uses a lot of electricity. New blockchains like Polygon, Solana are two large ones. They are using other types of ways to verify and track information that does not use as much like nearly as much electricity, because they learn from their predecessor. So they are being conscious. So you can see two factors here. One is we're building the future of the Internet. It's for the betterment of humanity that takes resources, but it needs to be a short term impact or something needs to change and it is now changing. And the future is, well, we're not going to do that. So there is this environmental awareness in future development so that we do not continue to increase that impact. So hopefully that semi-answer the question. I know that it is it is a big conversation. It's one that I'm only partially qualified, but I do have background in researching this quite a bit. And I think that there's there's a happy middle ground that we all need to come to when we look at bettering humanity and taking care of our planet. Well, I appreciate that. Personally, I've been hearing about proof of stake for for some time. Jonathan Ports quickly pushes back in the chat. He says proof of stake, if you have lots of currency units, you're more likely to win the mining task. The rich run the world. How is that a good thing? Hmm. Well, I think that there's always going to be this challenge of the rich and the poor. I think what I have seen in the conversations that I've been a part of and the people that I see interacting in the Web 3 space is that there are more people that are from marginalized and underserved communities taking advantage of the financial prosperity of crypto, where these types of individuals with an amazing business plan, track record, financial report could not get a bank loan in a traditional bank. It would be turned away, but they can actually fund operations, fund generational wealth and provide for not just themselves, their family, but their community through crypto. So those and those are not isolated moments. I am constantly in audio conversations on Clubhouse and on Twitter hearing about this, there are reports and statistics that more non whites are investing in these types of technology than their white counterpart because they see it as an opportunity, but the mining has a shelf life and we've all known that that's been from the very beginning. So you used to be able to mine on your laptop and then you needed a more sophisticated machine and then you needed GPUs and then you needed ASIC miners and then you needed a seven million dollar operation. So those things are part of it, but there are ways even right now. I mine crypto. There are other people that are mining crypto with a slightly smaller barrier of entry. Obviously, we're not making millions, but we are moving forward. Technology that we are passionate about and we are being rewarded for that. But I wouldn't stop the future of the Internet because just like people during Web 2, people during Web 1, most of them who are white males made millions and sometimes billions and sometimes hundreds of billions of dollars off of this opportunity that could provide incredible opportunity to more of humanity. Well, thank you for that fast answer. John has some more follow up, but we have other questions that are coming in about educational implications. I'll make sure we get to them and I'm thinking, Michael, we need to bring you back just to keep going because this is so so rich. This one question comes here from Devin Scarrett who asks, what might Dallas mean for reimagining ideas of traditional faculty governance or norms breaking down students versus faculty to crowdsource teaching and learning? Oh, I love this. And Devin, I love your title. I'm a huge design thinking fan. So please, I mean, this goes for everybody. My DMs on Twitter are open so you can privately message me. You can publicly at me on Twitter. But anyone who is interested in any of this, I'd love to connect with you all, collaborate, learn from you, share what I've learned. But I think it's a really great question. So what I'm excited about with the Dowson Education is I'm imagining incredible faculty. I mean, look at this room right now. It is filled with faculty that have incredible backgrounds, incredible research, talent, experience. What if we had the ability in a fast and streamlined way to decentralize the access of education between you and students the world over? Sure, we have seen this with MOOCs and online courses and Udacity and Udime. And these were really great. I mean, I think that MOOCs probably have the highest percentage of not finishing any higher ed or any sort of learning opportunity to date. But imagine if you could connect with students the world over and have a classroom where you could create that impact beyond the four walls of your school and beyond just the confines of your geographic location, but in a more meaningful and collaborative way. And so when you look at Dowson, you look at the Metaverse, there are ways for you to contribute to this mission of education. They were also passionate about in ways that traditional institutions cannot provide, but not at the expense of those institutions. So we still do need the centralized area for access, for mentorship, for resources, for opportunity. But I think that the Dow technology of creating an organization that can vote on, contribute and have information and treasury tracked by the blockchain will allow us to not only educate in a different way, but also be rewarded for that education in different ways. So I look at I don't know what it looks like for a higher ed education as much as I see it in K-12, where educators work all day and then they have a second job because they don't have the financial security that is that is possible by their single, the single position that they hold. So they end up not there. They're not just tutors or they're not continuing it in education. They're working at supermarkets. They are working second jobs that have nothing to do with education, but can put food on the table. So we're trying to reimagine ways in which education can be impacting other students beyond the four walls of school, give teachers that opportunity, give professors, give educators that opportunity to connect. But how can we be rewarded as well for the work that we contribute from a research standpoint, from a curricular standpoint, from a training standpoint and from an education standpoint? And yes, you could do that with web two, but it's centralized, which means you get a little piece of the pie and then someone is getting big pieces of the pie because that's how the centralized world works. Right. The owner of the company gets a lot and then all of the managers, all the fluff, all the bureaucracy, everyone needs to get paid until we finally get to the education that really made the value that that student wants to be there in the first place. So the Dow distributes that evenly. And it uses the blockchain for tracking of voting, of decision making and tracking of funds to make sure that the entire system can run without the need for a huge amount of bureaucratic red tape. And this is fascinating on so many levels. And again, I'm the emcee here. I'm not the chief inquisitor, so I want to make sure that everybody else gets a chance to follow up on that. And this is a very, very rich answer. We had other questions that are popping in. And I want to use the ones I want to make sure that people can get to see. One of them was thinking about hang on a second, I just lost it. And again, friends, we have about six minutes left. So I'll make sure this is a time where you can get in your questions before we have to go. Christina sets a corn. And Christina, I hope I got your name reasonably close, asks for educators wanting to build programs about blockchain or Web 3.0 NFT cryptocurrencies. She asks, how would you organize, say, a five course specialization or a whole master's program? Oh, I like that question. So the short answer is join us. Join us in the Ed Three Dow so you can join the Ed Three Educator community. And I can I can share the the the login for for that community with with Brian so you can share with with this great community, because that that is what we are doing right now. And while we do have some incredible professors and just really strong researchers as part of our initial genesis of members, we need more. We need educators that are curious and open, but that are excited to build together because the crowdsourcing energy of Web 3.0 with the credit of Web 3.0, Web 2.0, it's like, oh, let's collaborate. And, you know, someone might take it and run. Well, we we have this ability to build together and the Ed Three Dow and the Ed Three Educators community are both trying to materialize that we are doing certification courses for educators. We are building programs for schools at the K-12 level. And we're eager to find partners at the higher level as well so that we can pilot this and really, really make this happen because it's, you know, it's inevitable. The question isn't if the question is when. And I think that now is the time that we can prepare our students and show them that we are thinking about this because they are seeing this. And if it's not from us as their educators, as their trusted individuals that they know are trying to help them build their knowledge and their skill, they're going to get it from celebrities, they're going to get it from the media, they're going to get it from social media influencers and many of those students lack the analysis and and and and research capacity to make the right and informed decisions. So we it's incumbent on us. And I think that higher ed actually has the closest connection right now to the generation that's about to enter into a pretty significant Web 3.0 moment over the next 12 to 24 months. It's one of the reasons why we're doing a series of this here on the forum and trying to get experts like you and the best thinking in full conversation and and you can see that we have the full range of approaches, everything from from criticism to support, from curiosity to one network. That's the forum it's about. We have a very precise question from Armand, which I'd like to like to share. He asks, do you feel the scarcity of microchips now may have a long term effect on the accessibility of all he adds Internet of Things, as well as Web 3.0 blockchain in the future. So there is a shortage 100 percent. Is it a long term shortage? I I hope not. And I'll I try to be as transparent when I when I do not know the answer to certain things, I will share it. So I am not as well versed in right now the supply chain and economic impacts that not just covid, but now even the war in Ukraine are having on just the immediate and the past two years to the next two years of shortages. What I'm hoping to see is that especially with the Internet of Things, you are not requiring very complex processors to get things done. I have a really cool Internet of Things type device that was a little bit delayed. It was about two months delayed from when I purchased it to when I received it. It is running the helium block chain, which is a decentralized 5G network that uses this hotspot with an antenna on my roof to build our own decentralized 5G mesh, similar to the way that if you notice, and especially in urban areas, Verizon and AT&T are building these ginormous antennas that have a dedicated meter on them. That's how much power they're using to distribute centralized 5G. What's exciting about this project is when I look at the specs, they're much lower. It doesn't need as much power to be effective. But what it's doing is it's actually going to not just provide 5G to companies that will pay for the service to make the network profitable and have a purpose that's sustainable and viable, but we do have the opportunity because it's decentralized and it's voted on by the people for the people to actually provide internet access to underrepresented, underserved communities that even during COVID, these multi-million, multi-billion dollar communication companies couldn't figure out how to give free internet to those in most need. You saw pictures of them sitting outside of a Burger King getting Wi-Fi so that they could do their school work. So those levels of impact, I think, are not having a problem. But high end computing is being impacted by GPU shortages, by chip shortages. And you need chips for everything. You need chips for your refrigerator, you need chips for your cars, you need chips for your computers. So there is a major impact, but I don't think that that Web 3 is single-handedly disrupting this to anything more than a single digit percentage. But that is an opinion that you can take with a grain of salt because there are people that are much more well versed and knowledgeable in this data-wise than me, but that's my hunch. Well, thank you. Thank you. That's a great question, by the way. And Michael, I appreciate your hedging of the answer as well as the richness of the answer. It's astonishing to me that I have to say what I'm about to say now, which is that we are out of time. We are at the top of the hour again, and we have somehow raced through an hour of diving into Web 3. Michael, I appreciate your torrent of reflection, of ideas, of practical examples you're reaching out to all of us. What is the best way for us to keep up with your Web 3 work? Should we simply stalk you on Twitter or are there other venues which are best? The Twitter for me right now is the greatest way to connect with me and to have that conversation. So as I said before, my DMs are open. So if it's a question that you want to ask me directly and not put it on blast, but feel free to put me on blast because I think that the importance of the dialogue for this is less about the vacuum of this is the future and no turning back, but about really building the future of the Internet together. So either way, I would love to stay connected and the invitation to return is it would be an honor to continue these these conversations as you probably can tell very passionate about this space. Very passionate and also very knowledgeable. And we appreciate both of them very much. Thank you, Michael, and we're going to follow up. But and thank you again for coming. But don't go away, friends. Let me just point out where we're headed over the next few weeks. If you'd like to keep talking about this, all of these questions about the environmental impact, about the impact of chips, about how Dow might impact a faculty governance, it's all of this. Follow us on Twitter. Just use the hashtag FTTE or tweet at me, Brian Alexander or Shindig events or jump over to my blog at Brian Alexander or be happy to keep talking about this. If you'd like to dive into our previous sessions that we had, including one of our first sessions, as well as one we had earlier this year, just go to tiny world dot com slash FTF archive. You can find more. If you'd like to look ahead a bit to our other topics, we have another web three session coming up next week. We have sessions on public higher ed, on paying for college, on the climate crisis, just go to form the future of education that you asked to learn more. In the meantime, thank you all for the excellent, excellent questions. I'm really, really pleased with the wide range of views and ideas that you all expressed. I hope that this helps take us forward a bit more in our consideration of web three and we'll be following up with this with more. In the meantime, all of you, keep up all of your great work in higher education, above all, stay safe and take care. We'll see you next week online. Bye bye.