Customers who viewed this item also viewed

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers―Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship
4.615,814
$13.51
Principles: Life and Work
4.619,284
$14.90
Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
4.63,864
$16.78

Kindle
$9.99

Available instantly

Audiobook
$0.00
with membership

Hardcover
$15.65

Paperback
$15.86

$15.65 with 50 percent savings

List Price: $31.00

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery Tuesday, July 21 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or Prime members get FREE delivery Wednesday, July 15. Order within 14 hrs 58 mins.

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$15.65 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

Book-center

Returns

FREE 30-day refund/replacement

Gift options

Available at checkout

Available at checkout This item is a gift. Change

Payment

Secure transaction

$6.36

Fast Free Shipping – Excellent condition book with clean cover and pages. Barely handled, with minimal wear. An outstanding copy, close to enjoy! Fast Free Shipping – Excellent condition book with clean cover and pages. Barely handled, with minimal wear. An outstanding copy, close to enjoy! See less

FREE delivery July 20 - 22. Details

Or fastest delivery July 17 - 21. Details

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$15.65 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Ships from and sold by GREENWORLD BOOKS.

Add to List

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (83) from $6.36 & FREE Shipping

Image Unavailable
Image not available for
Color:

Follow the author

Chris Dixon

Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet

by Chris Dixon (Author) Format: Hardcover

(789)

Editors' pick Best Nonfiction

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$15.65","priceAmount":15.65,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"15","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"65","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"32NYgnwUIOCSJTbrYmSXxgvl10hTTL7cJuQrsUQnJ%2B7P830AuqdFAEQ61ecJEmByZK47d91qU83q8qbTcG3GOz%2FdaivCo2je3dnfqU%2FiyV%2BxAF0G7JbW0hbDdNHe8ysdArW%2BY8sx6eEiQdJZ%2FjDXjcRmrZRJB%2FlMMexLDaGgo%2F537oVEcWr4hV0%2BDRaO04vY","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$6.36","priceAmount":6.36,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"6","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"36","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"32NYgnwUIOCSJTbrYmSXxgvl10hTTL7c17GDsqLQF%2B6tY5E40X1RYoKrmH47xqtFKGuyEJgNRmlk5kT9EJL0kmV%2BCuRGSZ5KilRr4cEqlaKEUOkAfBG0dlvpinTKmCGV%2FIP5ktjXh9DOAipepzPHHcHniVT2OhyupVz%2FNq5Vcbsr8MnAW4Z4uZMBILYq8uor","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A potent exploration of the power of blockchains to reshape the future of the internet—and how that affects us all—from influential technology entrepreneur and startup investor Chris Dixon

“A must for anyone who wants to better understand the real potential of blockchains and web3.”—Robert Iger, CEO, Disney

“A compelling vision of where the internet should go and how to get there.”—Sam Altman, co-founder, OpenAI

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.

Read Write Own is a must-read for anyone—internet users, business leaders, creators, entrepreneurs—who wants to understand where we’ve been and where we’re going. It provides a vision for a better internet and a playbook to navigate and build the future.

Report an issue with this product or seller

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House
Publication date

January 30, 2024
Dimensions

5.72 x 1.07 x 8.52 inches
ISBN-10

0593731387
ISBN-13

978-0593731383

See all details

Great on Kindle

Great Experience. Great Value.

Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.

View Kindle Edition

This item: Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet

$15.65

Get it as soon as Tuesday, Jul 21

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Sold by Book-center and ships from Amazon Fulfillment.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers―Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship

$13.51

Get it as soon as Saturday, Jul 18

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

$14.71

Get it as soon as Saturday, Jul 18

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Total price: $00

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Details

Added to Cart

Some of these items ship sooner than the others.

Show details Hide details

Choose items to buy together.

4 stars and above

From the Publisher

A playbook for the next era of internet innovation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Chris Dixon’s Read Write Own is a must for anyone who wants to better understand the real potential of blockchains and web3 to drive even greater innovation, inspire more imaginative thinking, and ultimately unlock new growth opportunities in the future.”—Bob Iger, CEO, Disney

“Read this book to understand a compelling vision of where the internet should go and how to get there.”—Sam Altman, co-founder, OpenAI

“Chris takes on the challenge and succeeds at explaining just how crypto technology is what’s important to our technological future and how we all can benefit, much like we have from the Internet. I would encourage all regulators and crypto nay-sayers around the world to read this book.”—Mark Cuban, Shark Tank; Dallas Mavericks

“This book changed my mind. It’s a clear manifesto for redeeming the internet, and making it the democratic platform we all want. It’s the best positive case for crypto I’ve seen.”—Kevin Kelly, bestselling author of The Inevitable

“This is a pivotal moment for the internet. Chris Dixon’s fascinating book offers a refreshing and radical new take at a time when we need fresh thinking more than ever.”—Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI; co-founder, DeepMind; author of New York Times bestseller The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma

“Chris Dixon has always been someone who sees the future with clarity and practicality. He does this once again in Read Write Own making the case for blockchain technology as the fundamental building block of the future and clearly laying out where the internet is going.”—John Donahoe, CEO, Nike

“If you want to read the smartest, sharpest, and most balanced take on how blockchains could revolutionize our world, Chris Dixon’s Read Write Own is the best place to go.”—Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics, George Mason University; author, The Great Stagnation, co-author, Modern Principles of Economics

“I love this book: the history, the insights, the optimism. Dixon does a brilliant job of explaining where the internet went wrong, but does an even better job explaining how to make things right. Every page has important arguments about how blockchains can make technology more democratic, just, and trustworthy.”—Nicholas Thompson, CEO, Atlantic; former editor, NewYorkerdotcom

“Whether you’re already interested in crypto or just curious about blockchains, web3, and the future of the internet—this is THE definitive book about the industry and beyond.”—Emilie Choi, President and Chief Operating Officer, Coinbase

“A sharp-edged manifesto for ‘new networks with better architectures’—better because they’re free of corporate control.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Illuminating . . . Dixon’s detailed discussions add nuance to the oversimplified metaphors often used to describe blockchain. . . . A stimulating overview of blockchain’s potential.”—Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Chris Dixon is a general partner at the storied venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which he joined in 2013. He has invested there in Oculus (later acquired by Facebook), Coinbase, and other companies. He also placed early bets on Kickstarter, Pinterest, Stack Overflow, and Stripe, all of which have products in wide use today. Dixon founded and leads a16z crypto, a division of the firm that he has grown from $300 million in 2018 to over $7 billion of committed capital dedicated to investing in crypto and web3 technologies. In 2022, he was ranked #1 on the Forbes Midas List of the world’s best venture capital investors. Dixon has a bachelor of arts and a master’s degree in philosophy from Columbia University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, and has founded two startups (acquired by McAfee and eBay). He grew up in Ohio and lives in California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Why Networks Matter

I am thinking about something much more important than bombs. I am thinking about computers. —John von Neumann

Network design is destiny.

Networks are the organizing framework that enables billions of people to intelligibly interact. They decide the world’s winners and losers. Their algorithms decide where money and attention will flow. The structure of a network guides how that network will evolve and where wealth and power accumulate. Given the scale of the internet today, software design decisions up front, regardless of how seemingly small, can have cascading downstream consequences. Who controls a given network is the central question when analyzing power on the internet.

This is why critics who knock the tech startup industry for placing more emphasis on the digital world than the physical world—on “bits” versus “atoms”—miss the mark. The internet’s influence extends far beyond the digital realm. It intersects, permeates, and shapes large-scale social and economic landscapes.

Even pro-tech investors play up the idea. As Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder, once mused, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” The dig takes aim at Twitter, which originally limited tweets to 140 characters, but it’s intended to pan the perceived frivolity of the software-obsessed tech industry at large.

Tweets may seem frivolous, but they affect everything from personal thoughts and opinions to the outcomes of elections and pandemics. People who claim technologists aren’t focusing enough on problems like energy, food, transportation, and housing overlook that the digital and the physical worlds are interconnected and entwined. Internet networks mediate most people’s interactions with the “real world.”

The merging of the physical and the digital happens discreetly. Science fiction sometimes portrays automation as a visible process, where one physical thing gets replaced, one for one, by another as a direct substitution. In reality, most automation happens indirectly, where physical objects transmute into digital networks. Robo–travel agents didn’t replace human travel agents. Rather, search engines and travel websites absorbed their tasks. Mail rooms and postboxes still exist, but they handle far lower volumes of correspondence since the rise of email. Personal aircraft haven’t upended physical transportation, but internet services like videoconferencing have, in many cases, obviated the need for travel.

We wanted flying cars, instead we got Zoom.

People tend to underestimate the digital world due to the internet’s newness. Consider the language people use. Subordinating prefixes like “e-” in “email” and “e-commerce” diminish digital activities’ value as compared with their “real world” counterparts of “mail” and “commerce.” Yet, increasingly, mail is email and commerce is e-commerce. When people refer to the physical world as the real world, they fail to appreciate where they spend more and more of their time. Innovations like social media that were initially dismissed as nonserious can now shape everything from global politics, business, and culture to the worldview of any one person.

New technologies will further fuse the digital and the physical worlds. Artificial intelligence will make computers vastly smarter. Virtual and augmented reality headsets will enhance digital experiences, making them more immersive. Internet-connected computers embedded in objects and places—also called Internet of Things devices—will permeate our environments. Everything around us will have sensors to understand the world as well as actuators to alter it. All of this will be mediated through internet networks.

So yes, networks matter.

At their most basic level, networks are lists of connections between people or things. Online, they often catalog what people might direct their attention toward. They also inform algorithms that further curate attention. If you visit your social media feeds, algorithms churn up all manner of content and advertisements based on your presumed interests. “Likes” on media networks and ratings on marketplaces direct the flow of ideas, interests, and impulses. Without this curation the internet would be a deluge—unstructured, overwhelming, unusable.

The internet economy turbocharges networks. In an industrial economy, corporations accrue power mainly through economies of scope and scale; that is, ways of decreasing production costs. The diminishing marginal cost of producing more steel, cars, pharmaceutical drugs, fizzy sugar water, or whatever other widget lends an advantage to whoever owns and invests in the means of production. On the internet, the marginal costs of distribution are negligible, so power primarily accrues another way: through network effects.

Network effects dictate that the value of a network grows with the addition of each new node, or connection point. Nodes can be telephone lines, transportation hubs like airports, connection-oriented technologies like computers, or even people. Metcalfe’s law, one well-known formulation of the network effect, stipulates that the value of a network grows quadratically, meaning proportional to the number of nodes squared (that is, raising by an exponent of 2). For the mathematically minded, a network with ten nodes would be twenty-five times as valuable as a network with two nodes, while a network with a hundred nodes would be a hundred times as valuable as one with ten nodes, and so on. The law takes its name from Robert Metcalfe, a co-creator of Ethernet and the electronics maker 3Com who popularized the idea in the 1980s.

Because not all network connections may be equally useful, some argue for variations to the law. In 1999, David Reed, another computer scientist, put forward his own self-named spin: Reed’s law, which states that the value of large networks can scale exponentially with the size of the network. The formula best applies to social networks, where people are the nodes. Facebook has nearly 3 billion monthly active users. According to Reed’s law, that means Facebook’s network value is 2 to the 3 billionth power—a number so eye-blisteringly large that it would take 3 million pages just to print it.

Whichever approximation of network value you prefer, one thing is clear: the numbers get big, fast.

It makes sense that network effects would dominate the internet, the ultimate network of networks. People cluster around other people. Services such as Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok are valuable because hundreds of millions of people use them. The same is true of many networks that make up the internet. The more people exchange ideas on the web, the richer that information network. The more people message over email and WhatsApp, the more relevant these communication networks. The more people conduct business across Venmo, Square, Uber, and Amazon, the more valuable these marketplaces. As a rule: more people, more value.

Network effects take small advantages and snowball them into avalanches. When corporations are in control, they tend to guard their advantages jealously, making it difficult for anyone to leave. If you build an audience on a corporate network, leaving means forfeiting your audience, so you’re discouraged from doing so. This partly explains why power has consolidated into the hands of a few large tech companies. If this trend continues, the internet could end up even more centralized, commandeered by powerful intermediaries that use their might to crowd out innovation and creativity. Left unchecked, this will lead to economic stasis, homogeneity, unproductivity, and inequality.

Some policymakers seek to defang the largest internet companies with regulation. Their remedies include blocking acquisition attempts and proposing to split companies into parts. Other regulatory proposals require companies to interoperate, allowing easy integrations between networks. Users could then bring their connections wherever they like, and they could read and post content across networks according to their preferences. Some of these proposals could rein in incumbents and make room for competitors, but the best long-term solution is to build new networks from the ground up that won’t lead to concentrations of power for the simple reason that they can’t.

Many well-funded startups are trying to build new corporate networks. If they succeed, they’ll inevitably re-create the same problems with today’s large corporate networks. What we need are new challengers that can win in the market against corporate networks but provide greater societal benefits. Specifically, we need networks that provide benefits like those afforded by the open and permissionless protocol networks that characterized the early internet.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House
Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 30, 2024
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593731387
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593731383
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.72 x 1.07 x 8.52 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #160,126 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Other Databases
- #108 in Computers & Technology Industry
- #113 in Internet & Telecommunications
Customer Reviews:
(789)

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Chris Dixon

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Chris Dixon is a general partner at the storied venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which he joined in 2013. He has invested there in Oculus (later acquired by Facebook), Coinbase, and other companies. He also placed early bets on Kickstarter, Pinterest, Stack Overflow, and Stripe, all of which have products in wide use today. Dixon founded and leads a16z crypto, a division of the firm dedicated to investing in crypto and blockchain technologies. In 2022, he was ranked #1 on the Forbes Midas List of the world’s best venture capital investors. Dixon has a bachelor of arts and a masters degree in philosophy from Columbia University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, and has founded two startups (acquired by McAfee and eBay). He grew up in Ohio and lives in California.

Related products with free delivery on eligible orders

Sponsored | Try Prime for unlimited fast, free shipping

Page 1 of 1Start over

Related books

Page 1 of 1Start Over

Customer reviews

789 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Customers say

Customers find the book informative and easy to understand, providing useful mental models and serving as a fantastic introduction to crypto. Moreover, the writing style receives positive feedback, with one customer noting the absence of jargon.

AI Generated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more

30 customers mention content, 29 positive, 1 negative

Customers find the book informative and easy to understand, providing useful mental models and serving as a fantastic introduction to crypto.

This book is very insightful, informative, and overall a great read!...Read more

...This book is a great resource for anyone wanting to understand what is web3 and how will it make technology/data different in the future.Read more

...The book is full of great stories, simple analogies and lessons that has now inspired me to dig deeper into the right aspects of blockchain....Read more

Just a well-written and necessary book.Read more

14 customers mention readability, 13 positive, 1 negative

Customers find the book readable, with one describing it as fascinating.

Great read! Very good string of where we are and where we have been. I recommend the book very strongly!Read more

Excellent readRead more

Very good read. This is one of those few books you will read from beginning to the end and I enjoy it very much.Read more

Excellent book, recommended reading to anyone looking to understand how the world will look in 5 yearsRead more

9 customers mention clarity, 9 positive, 0 negative

Customers find the book easy to understand and concise.

...Dixon does this with clear, no jargon writing that anyone, including those outside of tech, can understand....Read more

...Concise and light, would compare it to The Case for Mars.Read more

Dixon writes with great skill and clarity....Read more

Extremely clear & easy to understand summary of the next exciting phase of the internet....Read more

6 customers mention writing style, 6 positive, 0 negative

Customers appreciate the writing style of the book, with one noting it is free of jargon, while another highlights its extensive coverage of intellectual property ownership.

Great writing, informative for this Luddite's skeptical inquiry.Read more

Just a well-written and necessary book.Read more

...online age told through the lens of how networks work; (2) a well-argued diatribe against our current online lives, which are controlled by a...Read more

...that's when I took the next step. Extensive writing on the ownership of intellectual property and the blockchain....Read more

Customer reviews require account verification. Sign in

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Image Unavailable

Follow the author

Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet

Purchase options and add-ons

Frequently bought together

4 stars and above

Customers also bought or read

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details

Videos

About the author

Chris Dixon

Related products with free delivery on eligible orders

Related books

Customer reviews

Customers say

Select to learn more