Talks & Entertainment

Due to unforeseen circumstances, this program has been canceled. All ticket buyers will be refunded. With questions, contact [email protected].

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 small group of companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook. In the New York Times bestseller Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet, technology entrepreneur, startup investor, and general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (“a16z”) 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.

Drawing on his twenty-five-year career in the software industry, Dixon shows how the internet has undergone three distinct eras: first, the “read” era, in which early networks democratized information; second, the “read-write” era, in which corporate networks democratized publishing; and currently 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.

Read Write Own is a potent exploration of the power of blockchains to reshape the future of the internet—and how that affects us all—providing a vision for a better internet and a playbook to navigate and build the future.

Dixon will be in conversation with MacKenzie Sigalos, an award-winning journalist who is a cross-platform contributor to CNBC and NBC and a founding co-host and contributor on the daily digital show, Crypto World.