The 1990s was the most glorious and fastest-growing era of the American Internet.
This is due to the strong pull of the Troika, namely the emergence of the World Wide Web and the browser, the strategic policy guidance of the Clinton administration, and the crazy support of venture capital. With the continuous and powerful boost of this three-stage rocket, the most imaginative legendary journey in the history of human technological development has been written so far.
If the World Wide Web, browsers, and the crazy support of venture capital are only the inevitable result of technological progress and are not dependent on human will, then the Clinton administration’s strategic policy guidance is the government’s policy formulation , to push the boat along and protect it in line with the trend of technological development. All three are indispensable.
So how do the policies of the Clinton administration promote the development of the Internet industry? Recently, US state governments are passing policies that are consistent with the development of Web3. For example, the city of Austin, Texas, USA will introduce relevant policies to support the development of blockchain and Web3 technologies. What is the current status of Web3 policy? Can the glory of the Internet be replicated with the help of policies?
1. The glorious moment of the Internet driven by policy
In 1999, "Funding the Revolution: Government's Response to the Revolution" compiled by the National Research Council The book "Support for Computing Research" divides the development of the Internet into four stages: the early stage (1960-1970), the ARPANET expansion stage (1970-1980), the NSFNET stage (1980-1990), and the Web The rise stage (1990-present).
In the four stages of the development of the Internet, the shadow of the U.S. government is indispensable in each process. Especially after the 1990s, the policy support of government departments played an important role in the development of the U.S. Internet industry.
On December 1, 1991, the "High Performance Computing and Communications Act" drafted by Senator Gore was passed by the U.S. Congress. This bill is the famous "Gore Act" in history, and the bill allocated $600 million. Promote the development of the Internet in the United States. On November 3, 1992, Bill Clinton was elected President of the United States and Al Gore became Vice President. Gore's dream for the Internet obviously moved the young Clinton. In September 1993, the Clinton administration of the United States released the "National Information Infrastructure Action Plan" to support the development of the information industry, promote the popularization of the Internet, and lay the foundation for the development of the U.S. digital economy. The President and Vice President jointly called for accelerating the construction of the National Information Highway.
In January 1994, Vice President Al Gore wrote the preface for that year's "Internet Guidance Outline" and became the first U.S. Vice President in U.S. history to hold an interactive press conference through the national Internet. Driven by policies, North America, Europe and East Asia all ushered in a climax of network construction, and 1994 was called the "International Year of Networks".
Under the strong protection of policies, the Internet world has ushered in a golden period of development. In 1994, Netscape, the most iconic wave of Internet commercialization, was born. That same year, Microsoft created a web browser for Windows 95. Also in this year, Jerry Yang and David Filo, two electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford University, founded Yahoo! (Yahoo!). The company was established in March 1995, and the world's first portal began. Netscape's IPO on August 9, 1995 marked the beginning of the Internet commercialization boom...
After that, a large number of Internet companies such as Yahoo were born and grew rapidly, ushering in the prosperity of the Internet economy. , successfully stimulated U.S. economic growth and laid the foundation for the prosperity of the U.S. technology community in the next two decades.
Although the U.S. Internet suffered heavy losses when the technology stock bubble burst in 2000, with the support of the George W. Bush administration for new economies such as the Internet, it successively introduced a number of bills to implement tax reduction policies and strengthen support for corporate R&D. Support, the basic institutional environment of the Internet is still good. After the technology stock bubble burst, a number of outstanding Internet companies such as Facebook/Twitter were born. Companies such as Google and Oracle also developed rapidly during this period.
In 2018, the Trump administration promulgated the National Cyber Strategy and other national strategic plans, clarifying the strategic goal of maintaining the United States’ influence in the development of the technology ecosystem and cyberspace.
It can be seen that even though the Internet is an inevitable product of the development of computer science, strong policy guarantees from government departments are still needed before large-scale application. It can be speculated that Web3 will also follow this pattern during its development. However, the decentralized and financial attributes of the blockchain itself will inevitably bring about problems such as difficult supervision and high risks.
But this does not mean that government departments "give up treatment". On the contrary, government departments are constantly groping on the road of supervision and regulation.
2. Regulatory exploration in the Web3 world
In October 2021, several executives from top venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Travel to Washington, D.C. to explain to leaders on Capitol Hill and the White House why they should regulate the next generation of the Internet (Web3).
a16z believes that policymakers are urged to develop a national strategy for these technologies, determine appropriate regulations based on the risks of different types of products, and consider cross-agency cooperation, not just by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) carry out supervision.
a16z’s lobbying targets include senior government officials in the White House, executive agencies, regulatory agencies, the House of Representatives and the Senate. And let high-level government decision-makers understand the true meaning of Web3 - a set of technologies including blockchain, encryption protocols, digital assets, decentralized finance and social platforms. Tomicah Tillemann, global policy director at
a16z, believes that one day it will make sense to form a new agency to regulate such budding technologies.
Tillemann said, “In terms of determining a country’s long-term success in the 21st century, there may be no area more important than the quality of digital infrastructure.” He also believes that “the United States today is not only losing This competition, and it’s not clear that many of our policymakers realize that competition is taking place.”
Later on December 8, 2021, the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services (House Committee on Financial Services) A five-hour hearing titled "Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation in the United States" was held. This is the most active, constructive, and bipartisan hearing on crypto finance in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives.
At the hearing, a16z policy director Tomicah Tilleman said: "This is the first time members of Congress have used the platform of the full committee hearing to emphasize that Web 3 is the future of the Internet. This is a national discussion about decentralized technology. A historic turning point. You also saw committee members acknowledging the potential of Web3 platforms to solve many of the issues they care about, including remittances and financial inclusion. The tone of all attendees so far has been reasonable and constructive. So far , all goes well."
In addition, the policy formulation around Web3 is not without progress.
On March 12 this year, Austin, Texas, USA will introduce relevant policies to support the development of blockchain and Web3 technology. The mayor of Austin, Texas, has instructed the city manager to help create a favorable government and community environment. , supporting the creation of new technologies such as blockchain and Web3.
Austin, Texas, Mayor Steve Adler has proposed two new initiatives to fully embrace blockchain technology and crypto payments to bring benefits to urban development. Mayor Adler tweeted that Austin is excited to support businesses and innovations that are turning the promise of Web3, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology into reality.
On February 16, a regulatory document submitted by the New York Stock Exchange to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this month was made public. It hopes to build a "cryptocurrency and NFT exchange" and compete with Web3 companies such as OpenSea.
Although, all these so-called regulatory actions cannot be compared with the policy assistance and financial support at the presidential level of the United States on the eve of the Internet explosion in the early 1990s, this just shows that the development of Web3 is in its infancy.
At least, at this stage, we clearly define what Web3 is.
As early as 2006, when people asked Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, what Web3 was, he said, "People keep asking what Web3 is, and I think when SVG was By building on the broad base of Web2—everything is rippled, folded, and seemingly angular—and a whole semantic web covering massive amounts of data, you have access to this incredible resource of data.”
At the same time, when people asked Netflix founder Reed Hastings, he elaborated on the simple formula that defines the Web term:
"Web1 is dial-up Internet, 50K average bandwidth, Web2 is 1M average bandwidth, Then Web3 should be a 10M bandwidth, full-image network, so it feels like Web3."
Now it seems that Web3 is by no means a faster Web2, nor is it a network with a larger data capacity. It is a value Internet based on a new architecture. Finally, with the support of policies, can Web3 recreate the glory of the Internet? We'll see.