Embrace For Future Impact
why I want to create this newsletter
This newsletter is a journal of the tools and web services I use on my mission to become one of the first individuals to achieve full digital sovereignty.
Digital Sovereignty to me means four things:
I take full ownership and control of my data
My data is protected with privacy and security
My data works for me and makes money for me
My data can persist for a long time, even in perpetuity if needed
This is very hard to achieve right now. Nobody can claim ownership of their own data as that resides on centralized monopolistic platforms built by giant tech companies such as AWS, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent. They control all your data and profit from your data. You get nothing (and they thank you for watching the ads). OpenAI is accelerating that process. We are increasingly spending more time on daily basis on two things: to prove I am NOT a bot, and to prove I am a DIFFERENT person from others on social media platforms.
First you lose your data.
Then you lose your identity.
Eventually you lose your sovereignty.
So are we on a path of self-destruction, collective loss of individuality, and ceding the control to the machine? Potentially yes if this trend does not reverse. There is glimpse of hope though, from certain corners of the blockchain industry (or commonly known as “Web3”) , where we have seen the proof that there is a technically viable path toward that state of enlightenment and freedom.
As a professional Web3 educator, evangelist, and investor, I am also an avid practitioner of many softwares, tools, and web services that are useful in this long march. This newsletter tries to share those cutting-edge trinkets to like-minded readers who are dissatisfied with the web’s status quo and want to define their own stories.
I’m not a software engineer by training but taught myself how to code, how to version-control with git, how to use command-line tool, and how to build website. The arrival of chatGPT, cursor, and DeepSeek has substantially lowered the barrier for normal users to acquire news skills and knowledge. We have to learn faster than the machine and not just use what is handed to us by the machine, passively.
If you join me on this journey, you will very likely have a front-row seat to witness how this battle of man vs machine will unfold in the next ten years and how it will end, probably in our life time.
The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.
- William Gibson, author of Neuromancer
Are you ready to buckle up and embrace for impact?
LFG!
regards
Herbert
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Disclaimer:
All opinions are of my own and NOT representing the institution that I work for.
None of the projects I mention in this newsletter shall be treated as investment advice.
Please do your own research (DYOR)