The World Computer
Aemula Writer Spotlight - 12.25.25
This is a modified excerpt from the What is Aemula? paper published 3.2.24
When most people hear the term “blockchain”, they think of cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and memecoins. Understandably, given the speculative nature of these investments, the majority of people do not trust the assets that they associate with blockchains.
However, it is important to discern between “the computer and the casino”. While blockchains enable the creation of cryptocurrencies as a new asset class for investment, they also unlock the ability to build the “world computer” — the vision of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
At its core, the “world computer” is how the internet was intended to be used — a shared digital environment that anyone can join and trust, but no single person or corporation controls. Instead of trusting a central authority to store information, enforce rules, or decide what is “true”, the rules are enforced by the network itself and can be independently verified by anyone. This allows everyone to coordinate and interact with confidence, even when they do not know one another.
In the context of media, this opens the door to a new model for reporting and distributing news. Individuals can independently coordinate to directly share credible information without it being filtered through centralized bottlenecks prone to censorship and audience capture.
If we want to receive news from outside of our immediate community, we must rely on strangers to produce it. How can we trust that what they are sharing is factually accurate and relevant?
Historically, the only option was to rely on trusted intermediaries — traditional publications or corporate social platforms. We were able to place our trust in an established entity, and they would handle the gathering of news from verified sources. We accepted this tradeoff. We gave up control over what news we received in exchange for the confidence that it was all news we could trust.
These “trusted” intermediaries have failed in this mission.
Their incentive structures have led them to prioritize reader engagement over factual reporting. There is little consequence for misinformation when your opponents are not your customers and hasty news cycles cover your mistakes.
We placed our trust in these institutions and they sold it to advertisers.
Admittedly, centralized publications were a good first-generation product when we lacked alternatives and news was largely focused on local events.
Though as we gathered around these centralized publishers, the continuous reinforcement of existing beliefs resulted in tightly-clustered communities that lack diversity of thought — closed loops. Information does not flow freely through a network of this structure. Ideas are restricted and edited along every point of relay.
There is no malicious intent behind our centralized publications, but these flaws are a quality of our current systems of distribution. These problems can be solved by removing the bottlenecks from the network.
We no longer have to accept the tradeoff of control for trust. We no longer have to rely on the centralized intermediaries that restrict the flow of information.
Decentralization means that participants in the network can be connected directly to the source rather than through single points of control. Previously, this would have been impossible given the problem of trust. However, over the last decade, we have developed new technologies that allow us to build this trust directly into the network itself using blockchains. Reputations follow journalists, and information can be independently verified by every participant in the network.
We can establish immutable guidelines that allow strangers the confidence to effectively work together, eliminating the need for a central “trusted” authority. Decentralization democratizes the control of the network and streamlines collaboration for accurately reporting the news.
By removing the middleman, we can pass more value on to those who are creating the content and moderating the network. Importantly, we are able to do this while prioritizing and incentivizing the accuracy and availability of relevant information rather than baiting engagement to sell ads.
Notably, this technology can work behind the scenes, meaning that users don’t have to set up digital wallets, buy cryptocurrencies, or attempt to navigate complicated user interfaces. With Aemula, you can sign up with an email, subscribe with a credit card, and trust that the news you read is free of outside influence and produced by reputable, independent journalists. We can use the world computer to report the news.
This week, we round out the Aemula Bookshelf with our fourth and final installment of book recommendations. We encourage you to explore these works to better understand the ideas behind Aemula and how decentralization can fix our information environment.
Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain
By George Gilder
“Google’s astonishing ability to “search and sort” attracts the entire world to its search engine and countless other goodies—videos, maps, email, calendars….And everything it offers is free, or so it seems. Instead of paying directly, users submit to advertising. The system of “aggregate and advertise” works—for a while—if you control an empire of data centers, but a market without prices strangles entrepreneurship and turns the Internet into a wasteland of ads.
The crisis is not just economic. Even as advances in artificial intelligence induce delusions of omnipotence and transcendence, Silicon Valley has pretty much given up on security. The Internet firewalls supposedly protecting all those passwords and personal information have proved hopelessly permeable.
The crisis cannot be solved within the current computer and network architecture. The future lies with the “cryptocosm”—the new architecture of the blockchain and its derivatives. Enabling cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether, NEO and Hashgraph, it will provide the Internet a secure global payments system, ending the aggregate-and-advertise Age of Google.”
Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet
By Chris Dixon
“The internet of today is a far cry from its early promise of a decentralized, democratic network of innovation, connection, and freedom. In the past decade, it has fallen almost entirely under the control of a very small group of companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook. In Read Write Own, tech visionary Chris Dixon argues that the dream of an open network for fostering creativity and entrepreneurship doesn’t have to die and can, in fact, be saved with blockchain networks. He separates this movement, which aims to provide a solid foundation for everything from social networks to artificial intelligence to virtual worlds, from cryptocurrency speculation—a distinction he calls “the computer vs. the casino.”
With lucid and compelling prose—drawing from a twenty-five-year career in the software industry—Dixon shows how the internet has undergone three distinct eras, bringing us to the critical moment we’re in today. The first was the “read” era, in which early networks democratized information. In the “read-write” era, corporate networks democratized publishing. We are now in the midst of the “read-write-own” era, sometimes called web3, in which blockchain networks are granting power and economic benefits to communities of users, not just corporations.”
Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains
By Vitalik Buterin
“The ideas behind Ethereum in the words of its founder, describing a radical vision for more than a digital currency—reinventing organizations, economics, and democracy itself in the age of the internet.
When he was only nineteen years old, in late 2013, Vitalik Buterin published a visionary paper outlining the ideas behind what would become Ethereum. He proposed to take what Bitcoin did for currency—replace government and corporate power with power shared among users—and apply it to everyday apps, organizations, and society as a whole. Now, less than a decade later, Ethereum is the second-most-valuable cryptocurrency and serves as the foundation for the weird new world of NFT artworks, virtual real estate in the metaverse, and decentralized autonomous organizations.”
Are you writing on Substack? You can easily set up automatic cross-posting with Aemula to instantly:
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Plus, you will have opportunities to access community resources and grants to support the content you want to create!
Link your Substack to your Aemula account using this link or send a quick email to writers@aemula.com to get started!
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Love this perspective! Seriously, you always cut through the noise so well. This distinction between the 'computer' and the 'casino' is so vital. It really highlights the potential for a truly decentralized network that fosters trust and open information, which I definitly think is the future. Such a great piece, keep it up!