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Top Internet Tech Stories of 2021
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Top Internet Tech Stories of 2021

From the metaverse to an orb that scans your retina and pays you cryptocurrency in return, these were the tech stories that defined 2021.

Richard MacManus
Dec 23, 2021
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2021 has been a crazy year, as I’m sure you’ll all agree. Things got weird on the tech front too, with the crypto market going nuts, Facebook rebranding to Meta, and more. Check out my annual summary of tech news below…


Notes from the Present 📱

Top 5 Internet Technology Stories of 2021

My second-to-last column of the year was a review of the year in tech news stories. A newsworthy story in the tech industry often isn’t about the best technology. Sometimes it’s hype, other times controversy, and still other times it’s a story that is stranger than fiction. There was plenty of all of that in 2021. Here’s my list:

  1. Web3 and NFTs; even Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, put an NFT (non-fungible token) of the web’s code up for sale at Sotheby’s this year. Sale price: $5.4m. Other crypto fans bought bored ape NFTs.

  2. Meta → Facebook’s pivot to the metaverse, which I covered in a recent newsletter.

  3. Photoshop on the Web; heck of a technical achievement, because Photoshop is a highly complex app and many thought it would never become a web app.

  4. Apple’s browser engine ban; again, maybe not a big deal for “normies” (as Web3 fans call non-tech people). But basically, Apple restricts browser competition on iOS and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is one government agency looking into it.

  5. Worldcoin and The Orb; not a joke…a company called Worldcoin launched a metallic ball this year — “The Orb” — that scans your retina and pays you cryptocurrency in return. It has raised $25 million from VCs and other investors.

Billionaires Call Out Web3 on Twitter

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey decided to take on the Web3 boosters this week:

Twitter avatar for @jackjack⚡️ @jack
You don’t own “web3.” The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives. It’s ultimately a centralized entity with a different label. Know what you’re getting into…

December 21st 2021

6,945 Retweets42,017 Likes

Fellow billionaire Elon Musk joined in the fun:

Twitter avatar for @elonmuskElon Musk @elonmusk
Has anyone seen web3? I can’t find it.

December 21st 2021

12,277 Retweets170,614 Likes

It was reminiscient, to me, of the early days of Web 2.0 — when the term was only vaguely defined and there were black and white opinions of its validity. I suspect we’ll see a lot more of this debate over Web3 in 2022.

Twitter avatar for @ricmacRichard MacManus @ricmac
Reuters, reporting on yesterday's billionaire tweetstorm, actually has a good definition: "Web3, a vague term for a utopian version of the internet that is decentralized"
‘Has anyone seen Web3?’ Musk, Dorsey mock tech’s latest buzzwordBillionaires Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey dismissed the so-called Web3 and criticized the involvement of venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz in building out what some have called the next phase of the internet.reuters.com

December 21st 2021

1 Retweet4 Likes

Web3 Infrastructure, For Real

On a serious note, I appreciated this background detail tweet from the Head of Product at Ankr, a company that provides Web3 Infrastructure. It was also good to hear an acknowledgement that Web3 “runs parallel to Web 2.0,” rather than trying to usurp it. Neuroth wrote an explainer post for my employer The New Stack, if you want to dive deeper into this topic.

Twitter avatar for @joshneurothJosh Neuroth | 0xjosh.eth @joshneuroth
@ricmac Web3 runs parallel to Web 2.0 and recognizes not all data needs to be on-chain Lots of web3 apps use @MongoDB and @vercel to power the web app @arbitrum + @IPFS & @ArweaveTeam helping mature the space for data that should live on-chain

December 22nd 2021

Coinbase Defines the Metaverse

This blog post nicely framed how the metaverse intersects with crypto. It was published by Coinbase, a crypto exchange that has a lot of motivation to encourage crypto usage within the emerging virtual world.

Meta Wants Blockchain in the Metaverse

A NY Times report:

“Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is aiming for “deep compatibility” with blockchain technology, according to an internal post on Tuesday from a top executive.”

Worth noting, as the NYT reporter did in his piece, that one of Meta’s board members is Marc Andreessen — whose VC firm a16z is Silicon Valley’s heaviest investor in crypto/web3.


Notes from the Past ☎️

Early Web 2.0 Definitions Were Bad Too

Here’s how bad the early days of Web 2.0 were, in terms of defining what it meant. In March 2005, I reported on ReadWriteWeb that the term “Web 2.0” now had a Wikipedia entry. The initial definition was awful, as this excerpt shows:

“Web 2.0 defines a newer incarnation of the World Wide Web typified by the transition from the typical website hosting HTML/XHTML pages, to a platform that provides a point of presence (sometimes known as a Web portal) […]”

Gen Z and iPods

This is why I don’t use TikTok…

Twitter avatar for @Phil_Lewis_philip lewis @Phil_Lewis_
This can’t be real

December 21st 2021

25,767 Retweets120,070 Likes

YouTube Co-Founder Disses LiveJournal

In a 2005 email dug up by Internal Tech Emails, YouTube’s Chad Hurley proves he was an early adoptor at being a social media troll, when he calls the early 2000s blogging platform LiveJournal “an intellectually unsatisfying and pathetic project.” (for the record, I think that’s totally unfair — I was never a big LJ user, but it was an excellent journaling/blogging tool for its time)

TheFacebook in 2004

How fast the tech world moves. When Facebook launched in 2004, as thefacebook, its design was about as professional-looking as ReadWriteWeb’s at that point (which is to say, not very!). Via Web Design Museum.


One More Thing 📞

It was a windy week where I live…but also this tweet sums up 2021, doesn’t it? The whole year has been like trying to take a selfie in a hurricane.

Twitter avatar for @SeanDGSeán Gillespie @SeanDG
Good evening for adventurous selfies in Oriental Bay

December 20th 2021

94 Retweets733 Likes

Happy Christmas and see you in the new year! Do reach out by email (just hit reply) or on Twitter (@ricmac) if you have any content suggestions, or just want to touch base.

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