Our world is full of data but data does not belong to the people. For instance, governments maintain land ownership records and electoral details of the population. Likewise, private corporations track our digital footprints on the internet and monetize them. You must have noticed search engines and social media websites. They manage to show you sponsored posts and products to make you click on them. This is by design. Hence, people who gave away personal and professional data do not get to own our data. NFTs, Web 3.0, and the technologies enabling the metaverse promise to make people and data free.
The first question we’ve to ask ourselves is, how did we get here? What happened in the last 30 years in internet technology? Private and public land ownership forms the basis of the physical economy. Industries, capitalists, and labor represent the foundations of political governance. Hence, how did electronic means of communication and information sharing come to dominate?…
