Nigeria's Perfect Internet 3.0
People, we have a huge opportunity ahead of us right now in the world. And Nigeria can play a major role. Yes, we lost in the Internet 1.0 and the present Internet 2.0 where we are mere participants. The next one should not pass us by.
Internet 1.0 could be likened to the dialup era (using wired phone lines to get Internet). Internet 2.0 is the mobile broadband of today. You can put Yahoo and AOL as the faces of Internet 1.0 while Facebook, Tencent and Google match well for internet 2.0. For Internet 3.0, there is no dominant player now (the phase is still at Irruption & Frenzy phases, see plot). Most of the current companies may not evolve to get there.
That Internet 3.0 will be distributed and I expect most frameworks to break down in the way we have organized firms to fix frictions in markets. If commerce becomes distributed, the concept of firms in most sectors would struggle because massive disintermediation will happen. How can you be a bank if customers can do banking directly and effectively with no intermediary?
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Nigeria operates on a distributed system; we have minimal govt impacts (centralization is only on sharing money, not services). Communities build themselves in distributed ways through town unions. That natural element should spur models for us to be creators in Internet 3.0 as technology accelerates what we have been doing for decades.
Internet 3.0 is going to be massive because from central banks to stock exchanges, under a perfect internet, all frictions would be gone and the existence of entities would be imperiled. When marginal cost becomes absolute zero in a perfect distributed Internet, it would be a new world. We must prepare because if Internet collapses power, Africa would benefit, provided we are ready.
So, directly or indirectly we have been 'practising' what could eventually turn out to be future technology? That famous biblical quote "the first shall be the last, and the last shall be the first", just like we see during military parades may be coming to manifestation. We copied supergrid system in power generation and transmission, not knowing that our communities and people were/are not ready for such engineering complexities. Even the public water board collapsed, each household comfortably resorted to boreholes and wells. On security, the communities are very well secured, once the sons and daughters of the soil take up the responsibility. We are really ingenious, but for our penchant for copying what happens on the other side, we have systematically copied our brains away. Now that the Internet 3.0 is being envisioned, the question is, which framework or technology will drive it: blockchain or its cousins? Interesting times, if we are ready...
"Even the public water board collapsed, each household comfortably resorted to boreholes and wells. On security, the communities are very well secured, once the sons and daughters of the soil take up the responsibility"
That is it Francis - everyone runs his or her show.
