Today’s Web is a shopping mall.

It is populated by struggling creators, relentless advertisements, and dominated by large chains and fast-food services.

There isn’t much room for mid-sized businesses, and customers and workers alike barely interact with each other.

You don’t feel comfort at this mall, all you can feel is annoyance and despair.

Let’s instead imagine the Web as a fertile farmer’s market, full of countless vendors selling local produce.

30 years into the web’s history, micropayments still aren’t a part of our daily lives. It’s one of the great unsolved mysteries — why didn’t this promising system take off, and who, if anyone, is responsible for its early demise?

As the world wide web soared in the 1990s, many of the systems envisioned by its early architects saw rapid development. But micropayments, which had once been described as an essential nutrient for any web system, seemed to be dead in the water.

There are arguments for micropayments. One is that they might enable the missing middle for creator content, by enabling purchases that might be too small to warrant either a subscription or a one-time $10 purchase. …

There’s a good chance that this decade will be remembered as the start of the decentralized age of computing.

Blockchains are already being applied to hundreds of new decentralized apps, protocols, and systems meant to replace existing monetary systems.

New technologies like decentralized finance and cryptocurrencies are experiencing tectonic shifts in short periods of time. Stability in the industry will bring new tools that can benefit whole new sectors. The healthcare data industry is one of the largest opportunities for these rapidly maturing systems.

Healthcare has already been turned on its head dozens of times. But decentralized systems have the…

I’ll be working with Mozilla to help reshape the economics of the web in 2021!

I have been granted a Mozilla Fellowship for 2021!

I have been writing recently about the future of digital currency, including micropayments and new models for creator compensation. In November, I hosted the Future of Micropayments conference, an online event focused on possible paths forward for these new financial models. I’m excited to continue this work next year with a Mozilla Fellowship, made possible by Coil.

Creators have three options for surviving online: closed marketplaces, recurring subscriptions and invasive advertising. It’s time for something new.

You’re in an arcade.

This arcade has a million machines.

Instead of coin slots, the games have different payment methods. Some are ad-supported, frequently pestering you with annoying pop-ups. Others won’t let you play until you enter your credit card. Some require a monthly subscription, and the rest have an up-front cost that is too much for casual use.

Some people will pick a few machines they like, and most will give up. Why can’t you just pay a quarter for a quick match against a friend? …

Have you ever found yourself turning on a light switch or opening a window without even realizing you were doing it? So much of the everyday technology in our lives has been simplified to the point where we hardly even notice it, even as it takes up larger portions of our daily lives.

Our culture has become so used to “Walk-By” interfaces that we accept them as part of everyday life. They’re stable, robust, and user-friendly. They have reached a certain kind of technological maturity, unlike newer web-based inventions which are still developing.

With COVID-19 driving us indoors and into…

This was my first year speaking at CES, the 100,000+ attendee strong technology trade show in Las Vegas earlier this month. I spent three days visiting companies on the trade show floor, at invite-only press events, and in hotel rooms.

You’re probably familiar with a scenario like this: You get into your car and all you want to do is pair your phone to the car through Bluetooth. But to do so, you must wade through a whole menu of items, put each device in pairing mode, and fail a few times before they finally pair. The same goes for pairing a speaker or other devices.

If you’ve already resigned yourself to this situation as just an inevitable inconvenience of the modern world, let me tell you a story about what might have been — and what could still be.

…