Season 4, Episode 16: Can Web 3 Save The Internet with Duane Valz

Duane Valz has led the legal and IP functions at prominent Silicon Valley companies operating at a variety of scales and growth stages. He has been broadly recognized over the past 10 years as one of the world’s leading IP strategists.  Duane is currently VP & General Counsel of Insitro, a venture-backed company applying machine learning and automation to disease target identification and new drug development. Prior to Insitro, he was VP & General Counsel of Zymergen Inc., a molecular technology growth company operating at the intersection of biology, chemistry, automation and machine learning.

Duane was previously a senior member of the Patent Team at Google, where he led strategic IP initiatives bearing on mobile, cloud, web, and open source technologies. He was also previously Associate General Counsel in charge of patent development at Yahoo! Duane began his career at Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin (now combined with Arnold & Porter LLP).  Duane serves on the Board of Directors for SMASH.org, is an advisory board member for UCOP's MESA program, and is on the advisory Board for the National Society of Black Physicists — all organizations focused on supporting underrepresented students in the pursuit of educations and careers in STEM fields.

The assemblage of computing devices, sensors, cloud-based services, artificial intelligence and software applications that make up the internet have transformed our daily lives quite remarkably over the past 25 years.  We enjoy connection, information, entertainment and host of conveniences with an ease and utility previously unimaginable.  But along with those positives has come a shadow side that is increasingly concerning.  This includes intrusive user tracking and targeting, secret government surveillance, cyber bullying, misinformation and distortions of history, election interference and voter manipulation, wide dissemination of conspiracies and violent ideologies, large scale cyber breaches, etc.

Can Web 3 save us from the various ills that are afflicting the Internet?  Its proponents suggest that a new approach to designing web services can help address many of the problems impacting internet users.  In this discussion, Duane Valz will address the promise and possible shortcomings of Web 3.  We'll also discuss what else might be needed to create a more positive internet experience going forward.