Lauren Lee McCarthy (she/they) is an artist examining social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living. She is a 2021 United States Artist Fellow, 2020 Sundance New Frontier Story Lab Fellow, 2020 Eyebeam Rapid Response Fellow, 2019 Creative Capital Grantee, and has been a resident at Eyebeam, ZERO1, CMU STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Autodesk, NYU ITP, and Ars Electronica. She is the recipient of grants from the Knight Foundation, the Online News Association, Mozilla Foundation, Google AMI, Sundance Institute New Frontiers Labs, Turner Broadcasting, and Rhizome. Her work SOMEONE was awarded the Ars Electronica Golden Nica and the Japan Media Arts Social Impact Award, and her work LAUREN was awarded the IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction. Lauren’s work has been exhibited internationally, at places such as the Barbican Centre, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Haus der elektronischen Künste, SIGGRAPH, Onassis Cultural Center, IDFA DocLab, Science Gallery Dublin, Seoul Museum of Art, and the Japan Media Arts Festival.

Lauren is also the creator of p5.js, an open-source art and education platform that prioritizes access and diversity in learning to code, with over 1.5 million users. She expands on this work in her role on the Board of Directors for the Processing Foundation, whose mission is to serve those who have historically not had access to the fields of technology, code, and art in learning software and visual literacy. Lauren is an Associate Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts. She holds an MFA from UCLA and a BS Computer Science and BS Art and Design from MIT.

https://lauren-mccarthy.com/

Stephanie Dinkins is a transmedia artist who creates experiences that spark dialog about race, gender, aging, and our future histories.  Her work in AI and other mediums uses emerging technologies and social collaboration to work toward technological ecosystems based on care and social equity. Dinkins’ experiences with and explorations of artificial intelligence have led to a deep interest in how algorithmic systems impact communities of color in particular and all of our futures more generally.

Dinkins’ experiments with AI have led full circle to recognize the stories, myths, and cultural perspectives, aka data, that we hold and share form and inform society and have done so for millennia. She has concluded that our stories are our algorithms. We must value, grow, respect, and collaborate with each other’s stories (data) to build care and broadly compassionate values into the technological ecosystems that increasingly support our future.

Dinkins teaches at Stony Brook University where she holds the Kusama Endowed Chair in Art. Dinkins earned an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and is an alumna of the Whitney Independent Studies Program. She exhibits and publicly advocates for inclusive AI internationally at a broad spectrum of community, private, and institutional venues. Dinkins is a 2021 United States Artist Fellow and Knight Arts & Tech Fellow. Previous fellowships, residencies and support include the Artist Fellow of the Berggruen Institute and Lucas Artists Fellow in Visual Arts at Montalvo Art Center, CA, Onassis Foundation, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Creative Capital, Soros Equality Fellowship, Data and Society Research Institute Fellowship,  Sundance New Frontiers Story Lab, Eyebeam, Pioneer Works Tech Lab, NEW INC, Blue Mountain Center; The Laundromat Project; Santa Fe Art Institute and Art/Omi.
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The New York Times featured Dinkins in its pages as an AI influencer.  Wired, Art In America, Artsy,  Art21, Hyperallergic, the BBC, Wilson Quarterly, and a host of popular podcasts have recently highlighted Dinkins’ art and ideas.

metaLAB(https://mlml.io/) is an idea foundry, knowledge-design lab, and production studio experimenting in the networked arts and humanities.

It is located at Harvard University and the Freie Universität Berlin. metaLAB (at) Harvard opened in 2011; metaLAB (at) F.U. Berlin opened in 2022. The offices work together as well as independently.

Like all platforms for experimentation, metaLAB is less a destination than a perpetual work in progress. Rooted in the arts and humanities, straddling scholarly, critical, and creative practice, it is a community of scholars, designers, artists, makers, technologists, curators, and educators dedicated to modeling new forms of cultural communication, creative and critical practice, and knowledge production.

metaLAB is an idea foundry in the sense that it is committed to ideation, debate, speculation, and theorization across the disciplinary grid.

metaLAB is a knowledge design lab inasmuch as it consists of a portfolio of projects that translate ideas into practical expressions, from experimental books and pamphlets to museum installations to software platforms and data visualizations to participatory events.

metaLAB is a production studio because it is committed to bringing together the mind and the hand, thinking and making. It tests out hypotheses and ideas by developing and delivering a wide array of outputs including database documentaries, software platforms, artworks, exhibitions, studio courses and workshops, data visualizations, and curatorial projects.

metaLAB (at) Harvard was founded in 2011 and is an institutional unit within the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, where it is involved in the Center’s research efforts in such domains as artificial intelligence, social justice, internet governance, cybersecurity, and the law. It is physically located on the 4th floor of 42 Kirkland Street within Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Because design practice is fundamental to its ethos, metaLAB maintains close ties to GSD faculty, students, and academic programs, as well as to Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

metaLAB (at) F.U. Berlin was founded in 2022 and is housed at the Institut für Theaterwissenschaft. As a joint international research initiative with metaLAB (at) Harvard, it operates as a transdisciplinary platform for the exploration of new knowledge practices in the scientific, cultural and social domains with a focus on critical data science and experimental museology. metaLAB (at) FU’s approach and aim is to develop practice-based research projects in collaboration with both Berlin-based and European cultural institutions and research partners.

Community

metaLAB is a porous community of experimentally-minded scholars, artists, designers, technologists, and thinkers, with affiliations and practices distributed worldwide. Together we instigate and manage a portfolio of projects: some we spin up ourselves; others involve partnerships with libraries, archives, and museums; others still involve commissions or competitions. Projects vary in scope and scale from provocations to platforms and weeks to years. Amidst the ebb and flow of projects, we come together for conversation and shared critique, inspiration, and collaboration. That conversation is ongoing and represents the heart of metaLAB as a community.

There are various forms of involvement with metaLAB.

Principals are faculty, staff, and affiliates with longstanding, sustained commitments to a number of metaLAB projects. Akin to the principals in a design studio, they advise on strategic matters.

Researchers are team members on metaLAB projects who are typically affiliated either with Harvard or the Freie Universität as graduate or undergraduate students.

Postdocs are usually in residence at metaLAB for the duration of the post-doctoral fellowships that they hold. Because metaLAB has no resources of its own to support them, they should expect to bring their own funding with them. If you are interested in pursuing a postdoctoral residency either at metaLAB (at) Harvard or F.U. Berlin, please feel free to contact us.

Senior Affiliates and Affiliates join metaLAB’s yearly cycle of conversation and discovery on a less formal basis, participating in regular meetings, joining projects, and individually or collaboratively advancing their own research. Affiliation lasts for one academic year though may be extended depending on a person’s project involvement. The designation “senior” is indicative of a higher degree of involvement in the metaLAB community.

By Maxwell and Alli

Introduction

Learning and education are fundamental pillars of web3. Everyone in the space–from seasoned blockchain developers to someone buying cryptocurrency for the first time–is constantly engaging with, and taking in endless information.

2021, as so many have recently noted, was a wild year in the crypto/web3 space. The increasing noise surrounding web3, crypto, NFTs, etc. resulted in a rise of visitors, contributors, and builders in the web3 ecosystem. This rise in visitors and contributors has since been ensued by a proliferation of educational “Web3 101” content.

What is web3 educational content and why does it matter?

Crypto has been experiencing exponential growth and mainstream adoption. Far too often, newcomers in the space say “I’m not smart enough to understand crypto,” “this stuff is way too complicated for me,” or “how can I stay safe and avoid scams?”

Crypto is complicated and blockchain-based technologies provide an entirely new global infrastructure that is radically changing every industry. The complexity of crypto and the seismic shift in global infrastructure makes the learning curve seem unbelievably steep and can deter those with valuable voices, backgrounds, and skills from entering the space. However, this perceived steep learning curve should in no way turn people away, or shut people down from approaching the ecosystem. Web3 educational content must address these barriers by providing accessible and meaningful learning resources and communities that enable new contributors to learn the basics of crypto. The world of web3 education is new and has a long way to go in terms of creating truly engaging and accessible material, but existing resources provide a foundation that newcomers can begin to learn with, and future web3 educators can begin to build on.

Below, we’ll explore some different web3 101 curricula and resources that have recently emerged and what they offer interested learners. We hope this small snapshot of the current web3 educational offerings will help newcomers (and veterans alike!) know where to begin and how to proceed on their learning/building journeys.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and if you know of any great crypto-educational resources that aren’t listed here, please DM us on Twitter @KatwellKat and @sonofalli

Web3 101 – Curricula, Courses, & Communities

Crypto, Culture, & Society (CCS) coined the concept of a learning DAO. They are examining the impact of crypto on culture and society. CCS is aiming to build the liberal arts education for crypto, and they have recently put together a great web3 starter pack that explores web3, DAOs, NFTs & DeFi. This is a terrific resource, and would be a great place to start.

Curious Addy’s Trading Club (CATC) is an educational NFT project where users who hold NFTs are granted access to a web3 learning community embedded within a game. From their site, “CATC is carefully designed to teach new users how to buy crypto on exchanges, set up a wallet, interact with smart contracts and NFTs, become crypto trading pros, and so much more, all while having fun playing a game.” This game allows young learners to engage in a virtual world built on polygon in which they can safely make transactions and learn web3 wallet hygiene without the risk of losing money. While targeted at young learners, this platform also helps remove the financial barrier to access in “learning by doing” in crypto. Learning how to make transactions, mint NFTs, and interact with a digital wallet without the financial risk or hurdle can allow even more users to engage with the web3 ecosystem. This is one of the more exciting projects, and it will be extremely interesting to see how this game-based and child-oriented educational platform develops.

Invisible College is an NFT gated learning community, where owning one of their NFTs– “decentralians”– grants you access to their educational content. Their first course (slated for release in Spring of 2022) will be an ‘NFT 101’ that uses the creation of Decentralians as the case study.

Odyssey DAO is a learning DAO aiming to ‘onboard 1 million people to web3.’ Recently, they’ve been doing a ‘12 days of Web3’ email series that is both concise and accessible. On their site, they have accessible and digestible paths that guide learners through web3 basics. They start with an Intro to Web3 path that culminates with a learner understanding the basics of web3, owning a digital wallet, and an ENS name. The Intro to Web3 path branches into a DeFi path, a DAO path, and an NFT path. The learning design here is strong, and it’s digestible and simple.

Late Checkout has an NFT-gated Crypto College crash course led by Greg Isenberg. Minting an NFT granted access to the 1 week course, which was held in late November of 2021. On top of that, the NFT granted access to the community of folks that took the course– allowing learners to simultaneously engage with content and build a network. The course focused on NFTs, tokenized communities, and DAOs. It is unclear if there will be more iterations of this week-long course in the future, but it seems likely!

Web3 University “is an online educational platform bringing you the best resources and tutorials across the blockchain development ecosystem. A one-stop, chain-agnostic shop for developers looking to learn about writing smart contracts, minting NFTs, and building fully-functional end-to-end dApps that can scale to millions worldwide.” The goal of Web3 University is to curate existing blockchain developer educational resources. Their intention is to help decrease the initial stress that interested crypto-developers experience when trying to piece together a disparate curricula from various educational resources in the ecosystem. Right now they offer Web3 University produced content on Intro to Blockchain, Intro to Smart Contracts, and an Intro to NFTs. They’ve curated resources for how to build with L1s (Ethereum, Solana, Binance Smart Chain) and L2s (Polygon, Optimism, and Arbitrum) as well as communities to engage with (She256, Developer DAO, Buildspace). Web3 University is backed by top players in the crypto space (a16z, OpenSea, Alchemy), and they’ve curated high quality detailed content.

EnterWeb3 is an educational experiment providing curated resources on the basics of web3. The team building it is adding resources and content as they grow and learn, so fellow N3wbs can learn alongside them.

Surge Women is a female-led community focusing on educating and securing space for women and non-binary individuals in web3. They have a thriving Discord community where women and non-binary individuals can learn alongside each other, produce a newsletter, and maintain a “crypto dictionary” as well as several other “how to” guides and educational resources on their website.

Kernel is a “peer-to-peer learning community dedicated to the journey towards a better understanding of truth: in our work, in our relationships with others, and in our inner worlds.” Kernel facilitates a series of 8 week long, application gated “blocks” of conversation and learning surrounding web3.

PixelBeasts is an NFT 101 project that guides new users through buying their first NFT. PixelBeasts also has a community demo day for NFT holders to chat about projects they’re starting, and a fellowship for supporting web3 founders.

Continuum is a tokenized mobile-first learning community that enables learners to earn crypto as they learn and also enables creators to monetize their content.

UseWeb3 is a collection of curated resources for how to build on blockchains in web3, with a particular focus on the Ethereum ecosystem. They offer a collection of websites, videos, books, podcasts, tutorials, courses, coding challenges, and a diverse and extensive job board. This is an amazing resource.

Primer is a free, open-source, and accessible crypto 101 guide / curriculum that explores the history of money, Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs. They also offer a curated list of how to get started in web3 and some of the best newsletters and podcasts / video channels to stay updated with.

Lirners is an “NFT project that represents the Internet learner.” NFT holders will be granted access to a ‘digital school’ that offers cohort-based courses, access to grants, a professional network, and in-person educational conferences. Their long-term plan is to purchase physical property, create an idyllic campus, and launch a token that will reward learners and educators in the digital-learning economy.

Web3 201 – Learning by Doing & Contributing

Beyond the Web3 101’s listed above, there are also several other learning resources and experiences more focused on “learning by doing.” These mediums are not necessarily web3 101’s, but more web3 201’s– after you’ve developed foundational knowledge independently or through the highlighted 101’s above, you would utilize the following tools and resources to easily begin building and/or contributing.

Layer3’s motto is “earn crypto by doing sh*t,” and they focus on bounties that learners can complete. These bounties allow learners to earn crypto by contributing to DAOs or producing content. Bounties are organized as being social (i.e. creating Twitter threads), content (i.e. creating blog posts), and technical (i.e. building with Solana), as well as by community (i.e. IndexCoop, GCR, Harmony).

RabbitHole is a learn to earn platform “building the on-chain resume for the future of work in crypto.” RabbitHole guides users through decentralized applications and crypto protocols through curated content and rewards users with cryptocurrency for completing on-chain tasks. These on-chain tasks are typically cryptocurrency transactions ranging from swapping crypto in a decentralized exchange to borrowing and lending.

Kleoverse enables users to begin building their professional identity in web3 by contributing to leading crypto organizations and DAOs. Kleoverse organzies DAOs and their contribution opportunities and rewards users with cryptocurrency and NFTs that verify their ‘proof of talent’ for completing bounties and contributing to organizations.

Developer DAO’s mission is “to accelerate the education and impact of a new wave of web3 builders” through onboarding and educating web3 developers as they build public goods. They are currently in their season 0 test run and are no longer accepting applications for membership, but their notion is a rich collection of guides and resources.

Buildspace aims to onboard web2 developers to web3 through project-based hands-on courses. They currently offer a handful of synchronous and asynchronous project-based courses such as, “Intro to web3 – build a web3 version of Twitter,” “Mint your own, custom NFT collection,” and “Build your own DAO with just Javascript in a weekend.” All courses are 100% free and revolve around the ethos of learning by doing collaboratively.

CryptoZombies “is an interactive school that teaches you all things technical about blockchains” through interactive step-by-step coding lessons for new developers to learn Solidity and build a decentralization application game about zombies. The curriculum is broken up into four sections with individual lessons, and the lessons are 100% free.

Questbook is a community of developers learning how to build in web3 through five different free and asynchronous learning tracks (covering topics such as intro to blockchain and building on Ethereum, Solana, Near, and Polygon).

LearnWeb3 DAO is another community of developers learning how to build in web3 collaboratively. They offer four different free learning tracks: freshman (learning Javascript), sophomore (diving deeper in blockchains and web3) , junior (building with different protocols) and senior (learning more advanced blockchain concepts and building a decentralized exchange).

Ground Zero is an initiative supported by members of the Superteam DAO, a DAO that supports the most promising projects in the Solana ecosystem. Ground Zero is an open-access, fully free curriculum that guides users through the basics of blockchains (Solana in particular), NFTs, DAOs, and how to begin coding in the Solana ecosystem.

Encode Club is a web3 learning community that helps new developers learn how to code on the leading blockchains (such as Near, Avalanche, Algorand and others). Encode also offers AMA sessions with leading excerpts, free bootcamps that support developers through educational programming and mentorship, hackathons, and an accelerator program that helps developers become founders in web3. They also invest in emerging web3 projects by offering resources and community-support.

Figment Learn is “the Web3 education platform for developers, by developers.” They have an extensive library of high quality 101’s for building in the leading protocols (Avalanche, Celo, Solana, Polygon, Near, Ceramic, Polkadot, Secret, Tezos, and The Graph). They also have a great collection of tutorials for diving into more specific endeavors within these chains/protocols.

Blockgeeks is an online crypto education platform that offers a variety of free and premium courses educating users about a range of blockchains and how to begin building. They have different learning tracks for various topics and levels of difficulty that range from 4-10 weeks in length. They also offer a collection of guides and articles.

Helpful Additions

YouTube channels, podcasts, etc.

Whiteboard Crypto is one of the top YouTube channels focused on crypto education. The creators use accessible language and real world analogies, stories, and examples to break down and explain topics in the cryptocurrency world.

DAOn the RabbitHole is Rabbithole’s official podcast. The episodes aim to help people learn about web3 through a series of interviews with experts and deep dives into a variety of topics including economics, politics, technology, psychology, and more. The podcast aims to be a resource for both crypto-natives and the crypto-curious to learn more about how they can contribute to the web3 ecosystem.

Probably Nothing is an NFT-focused podcast co-hosted by Alexis Ohanian, Founder and Former Executive Chairman of Reddit and Current Founder of VC firm Seven Seven Six, and Tiffany Zhong, Founder and CEO of Islands. The show is considered the “one-stop podcast for NFT news, deep dives, and interviews”– also a great educational resource.

Crypto Girls is a podcast created by two non-tech girls attempting to understand the world of crypto and the web3 ecosystem. Dylan and Katie, the two co hosts, do an excellent job of using accessible language and making web3 education both engaging and impactful.

Simply Explained is a YouTube channel focused on explaining complex topics in tech in simple ways. While the channel does not entirely focus on cryptocurrency, Xavier, the creator, has several helpful series and playlists that act as web3 101 content and are accessible for learners at all points in their crypto journey.

We hope this curation of resources is helpful to you on your web3 journey. If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions to add to this collection of resources please DM us on twitter @KatwellKat and @sonofalli

COVID has taken our reliance on software to the next level. We now rely on software for managing our days from the moment we wake up until we go to sleep. Software predicts the future based on fixed patterns from the past. It produces procedures instead of experiences and solutions instead of care. On the other hand, fortune-telling is an ancient language of change. It elucidates, unlearns, and reworks patterns. How can the art of fortune-telling guide us to rethink software as systems of healing?

Using different cultures’ patterns surrounding fortune-telling as a source, we will collectively determine patterns for our own fortune-telling Instagram filter in Part One. Then join us for Part Two when we take our patterns and code our own Instagram filter using Spark AR.

Date: June 8, 2021. 7PM.

Formate: Online lecture via Zoom.

Audience: Open to all who are interested in critical software culture. No prior software design or development experience is needed.

Materials: Participants should have a writing utensil, paper, and a personal computer with access to the internet.

This program is supported in part by public funds from the Brooklyn Arts Council, and Pioneer Works, Center For Art and Innovation.

COVID has taken our reliance on software to the next level. We now rely on software for managing our days from the moment we wake up until we go to sleep. Software predicts the future based on fixed patterns from the past. It produces procedures instead of experiences and solutions instead of care. On the other hand, fortune-telling is an ancient language of change. It elucidates, unlearns, and reworks patterns. How can the art of fortune-telling guide us to rethink software as systems of healing?

Using different cultures’ patterns surrounding fortune-telling as a source, we will collectively determine patterns for our own fortune-telling Instagram filter in Part One. Then join us for Part Two when we take our patterns and code our own Instagram filter using Spark AR.

Date: July 1, 2021. 7PM.

Formate: Online lecture via Zoom.

Audience: Open to all who are interested in critical software culture. No prior software design or development experience is needed.

Materials: Participants should have a writing utensil, paper, and a personal computer with access to the internet.

RYAN KUO lives and works in New York City. His works are process-based and diagrammatic and often invoke a person or people arguing. This is not to state an argument about a thing, but to be caught in a state of argument. He utilizes video games, productivity software, web design, motion graphics, and sampling to produce circuitous and unresolved movements that track the passage of objects through white escape routes.
His recent projects aim to crystallize his position as a hateful little thing whose body fills up white space out of both resentment and necessity. These include an AI conversational agent that embodies the blind “faith” that underpins both white supremacy and miserable white liberalism and casts doubt on nonbelievers, and an artist’s book about aspirational workflows, File: A User’s Manual, modeled after software guides for power users.
His 2018 solo commission at bitforms gallery, The Pointer, addressed whiteness as “an unremitting affective failure that erases bodies, including its own, in its search for a neutral point of origin,” and doubled as an admission of his own familiarity with the elaborate contortions needed to assimilate into whiteness.

Website:

https://rkuo.net/

Suggested Reading:

https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/ryan-kuo-interview/

https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/ryan-kuo-race-technology-wendy-chun-63653/