The way we interact with the internet as we know it today is indeed far from what was imagined since its inception 3 decades ago, and what it will even become in the next couple of years will be beyond our projections for it today.
Web 3.0 or ‘Semantic Web’ as it is sometimes referred to, introduces a new era of a decentralized web space whereby machines can also process content with near-human-like intelligence through the power of AI(Artificial Intelligence) systems that can run smart programs to assist users (i.e., a “Global Brain” where all data would be connected and understood both contextually and conceptually), — but how well can a machine understand the difference between a jaguar (the animal) and a Jaguar (the car)?
Before we take a deeper dive into what Web 3.0 holds, let's go back a little to what we had before Web 3.0; Web 2.0 — Web 1.0.
Web 1.0 (1991 — 2004)
The first iteration of the World Wide Web, pioneered by Tim Berners-Lee, was designed to be a collaborative medium where scientists can meet to read and write, a network of computer systems where experiments can be shared.
Some potentials of this design were tapped by early adopters such as AOL, Compuserve, early Yahoo, and others. These online service providers were the gateway to Web 1.0 as businesses, governments, and individuals began to upload content to the Web.
As at that time, most participants were consumers of content, and the creators were typically developers who created websites that contained information served up mainly in text or image format.
Web 2.0 (2005 — present)
The term Web 2.0 was coined by Darcy DiNucci in her article “Fragmented Future”, which introduced the “web as a platform”. Moreso, with the progression in technology over time, we have seen and experienced how robust and interactive the internet has become.
Consequently, this has brought the growth of Social networks like Facebook, YouTube, and platforms like Airbnb, Uber, Google Docs & Figma.
These advanced platforms moved the world on from static desktop web pages designed for information consumption to interactive experiences and user-generated content by putting publishing tools into the hands of users who want to promote various forms of writing, podcasts, or image/video productions.
Web 2.0 was rapidly adopted by users and many giant companies. These companies saw an opportunity to create a business model which relies on user participation to create fresh content and profile data to be sold to third parties for marketing & other purposes.
Indeed, Web 2.0 has become a retail space dominated by centralized apps from big companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, where everyone tries to build an audience, collect data and monetize that data through targeted advertising.
The exploitation and centralization of user data have been built into Web 2.0’s core engineering and business model and are mostly done without users’ meaningful consent. This is how it has been designed to function today.
Web 3.0 (emerging)
The emergence of technologies such as distributed ledgers and blockchain storage has paved the way for a new paradigm that places data decentralization, transparency, and a more secure environment at its core, replacing Web 2.0’s centralized structure, surveillance, and exploitation. With decentralized infrastructure and platforms, users are able to rightfully own and profit from their own data.
Web 3.0 seeks to utilize blockchain networks of decentralized nodes that can validate cryptographically secured transactions without a single centralized entity as the source of truth, combined with computers able to interpret information more intelligently.
As such, users and computers will be able to connect more seamlessly with data in a trustless environment.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a critical role in making Web 3.0 a more intelligent and powerful version of the Web in terms of its ability to process information. Ultimately, this will enable machines to more atomically interpret the meaning behind the data or its semantics to deliver significantly smarter user experiences.
Although Web 3.0 has progressed into a platform beyond the Semantic web which was originally envisioned by Tim Berners Lee who expressed his vision as follows;
‘I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web — the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A “Semantic Web”, which makes this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy, and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The “intelligent agents” people have touted for ages will finally materialize.’
Web 3.0 enhances the internet with some added features,
- Verification
- Trustless
- Self-governing
- Permissionless
- Distributed and robust
- Stateful
- Native built-in payments
In Web 3.0 applications either run on blockchains, decentralized networks of peer-to-peer nodes (servers), or a combination of the two that forms a cryptoeconomic protocol. These apps are often referred to as Dapps (decentralized applications).
To achieve a stable and secure decentralized network, participants are incentivized and compete to provide the highest quality services to anyone using the service.
In truth, we are still not quite at the stage of fully realizing the true capabilities of this next-generation internet despite having been in development for over ten years. As a result of limitations in terms of data storage and processing power, Web 3.0 faces a significant scalability challenge.
While blockchain technology continues to struggle with scalability issues, it increasingly seems that overcoming these current roadblocks will be a matter of when rather than if.
What’s more, it seems highly unlikely that the giant centralized entities such as governments and multinational corporations will simply relinquish their control over profit-generating data. Sometimes, this data is their very lifeblood, and wresting control of it from them will be far from easy.
Nonetheless, with the decentralization juggernaut in full flow, it would seem that the opportunity for individuals to take control from the few corporate behemoths that have dominated the internet is now closer than ever before and a fairer, more transparent online world awaits us all.
It is expected that Web 3.0 will provide a more personal browsing experience and will help establish a more neutral Internet. Once this infrastructure is properly adopted, it will trigger a fresh wave of innovations that will empower users with more control over their data. It will also make the Internet more integral to our daily lives.
In summary, Web 3.0 will bring us a fairer internet by enabling the participants to be sovereign. Web 3.0’s decentralized blockchain protocol will enable individuals to connect to an internet where they can own and be properly compensated for their time and data in a trustless environment, eclipsing an exploitative and unjust Web.
