Web 3.0 – The Next Generation of the Internet

The year 2021 has proved to be a significant year for the crypto sector as a whole. The global crypto market capitalization rose to $3 trillion, the highest it has even been so far, in October 2021. Along with just the coins, other crypto elements like non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the METAVERSE, as well as Web 3.0 also significantly took off in terms of visibility and adoption.

Web 3.0 or Web3 represents the next generation of the internet, one that focuses on shifting power from big tech companies to individual users.

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What is The Web – World Wide Web?

The World Wide Web—commonly referred to as WWW, W3, or the Web—is an interconnected system of public WebPages accessible through the Internet. Actually, the Web is an information system where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs, such as https://example.com/), which may be interlinked by hyperlinks, and are accessible over the Internet. The Web is not the same as the Internet. It is one of many applications built on top of the Internet.

The web is a way to view and share information over the internet. That information, be it text, music, photos or videos or whatever, is written on web pages served up by a web browser.

The development of the World Wide Web was begun in 1989 by the English scientist ‘TIM BERNERS-LEE’ and his colleagues at CERN, an international scientific organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. He wrote the first web browser in 1990 while employed at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. The browser was released outside CERN to other research institutions starting in January 1991, and then to the general public in August 1991. They created a protocol, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which standardized communication between servers and clients.

And the most interesting thing is that, no single person or organization controls the internet in its entirety. Like the global telephone network, no one individual, company or government can lay claim to the whole thing. However, lots of individuals, companies, and governments own certain bits of it.

Before we discuss WEB 3.0, we need to know about the previous versions of this web – WEB 1.0 and WEB 2.0.

WEB 1.0 – The First State of the Internet

WEB 1.0, also called the Static Web, was the first and most reliable internet in the 1990s despite only offering access to limited information with little to no user interaction. Back in the day, creating user pages or even commenting on articles weren’t a thing.

 Features:

• Web 1.0 didn’t have algorithms to sift internet pages, which made it extremely hard for users to find relevant information.

• Simply put, it was like a one-way highway with a narrow footpath where content creation was done by a select few and information came mostly from directories.

• The early Internet was mostly composed of web pages joined by hyperlinks, without the additional visuals, controls and forms that we see when we log on today.

• Generally, Individual WebPages were made of static pages that were hosted on web servers run by an internet service provider (ISP) or on free web hosting services.

Web 1.0 was the first implementation of the web and it lasted from 1989 to 2005. It was defined as a web of information connections. According to the innovator of the World Wide Web, TIM BERNERS-LEE considers the Web as ‘READ-ONLY’ Web. In other words, the early web allowed us to search for information and read it.

Examples of Web 1.0 are: Static Web Sites and Personal Sites.

WEB 2.0 – The Present State of the Internet

WEB 2.0 (also known as participative or participatory web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and devices) for end-users.

A Web 2.0 website allows users to interact and collaborate with each other through social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community. This contrasts with the first generation of Web 1.0-era websites where people were limited to viewing the content in a passive manner.

Features:

• Web 2.0 describes the current state of the internet, which has more user-generated content and usability for end-users compared to its earlier incarnation.

• Web 2.0 is the term used to describe a variety of web sites and applications that allow anyone to create and share online information or material they have created.

• According to Best, the characteristics of Web 2.0 are rich user experience, user participation, dynamic content, metadata, Web standards, and scalability.

• A key element of the technology is that it allows people to create, share, collaborate & communicate.

The term ‘WEB 2.0’ was coined by Darcy DiNucci in 1999 and later popularized by Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty at the first O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 Conference in late 2004. WEB 2.0 is a term that was introduced in 2004 and refers to the second generation of the World Wide Web and we are still using this web.

Examples of Web 2.0 sites include: Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and various blogs, which all have transformed the way the same information is shared and delivered.

WEB 3.0 – The Next Generation of the Internet

Web3, also known as Web 3.0 or Semantic Web, is an idea for a new iteration of the World Wide Web that incorporates decentralization based on Blockchains. This is the next stage of the web evolution that would make the internet more intelligent or process information with near-human-like intelligence through the power of AI systems that could run smart programs to assist users.

This includes several technologies in order to arrange and structure data you can find on the internet to make it available and usable by programs and software thanks to a metadata system.

Features:

• Web 3.0 is the third generation of the Internet—a global network that permits intelligent interactions between all its users and devices.

• With Web 3.0, information is more connected thanks to semantic metadata. As a result, the user experience evolves to another level of connectivity that leverages all the available information.

• Web 3.0 is the next generation of internet services for websites and applications that will focus on using a machine-based understanding of data to provide a data-driven and Semantic Web.

• The three dimensional design is being used extensively in websites and services in Web 3.0. Museum guides, computer games, ecommerce, geospatial contexts, etc. are all examples that use 3D graphics.

• The ultimate goal of Web 3.0 is to create more intelligent, connected and open websites.

• Blockchain serves as the foundation of Web 3.0. Web 3.0 would not be possible without the systems provided by the BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY. The enhanced security and privacy offered with Blockchain is something that the developers of Web 3.0 are using to appeal to internet users.

The term ‘WEB 3.0’ was coined in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, and the idea gained interest in 2021 from cryptocurrency enthusiasts, large technology companies, and venture capital firms.

Examples of Web 3.0 applications are: Wolfram Alpha and Apple’s Siri, which can summarise large amounts of information into knowledge and useful actions for people.

If you look for a Web 3.0 definition you probably won’t find a clear and unique explanation. In 2006, Tim Berners Lee said, “People keep asking what Web 3.0 is. I think maybe when you’ve got an overlay of scalable vector graphics – everything rippling and folding and looking misty – on Web 2.0 and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data, you’ll have access to an unbelievable data resource…”         – TIM BERNERS LEE.   

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, dismissed Web3 as a “venture capitalists’ plaything”. Dorsey thinks that Web3 will not democratize the internet, but it will shift power from players like Facebook to venture capital funds like Andreessen Horowitz.   – JACK DORSEY.

In the year of 2021, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk expressed skepticism in a tweet saying that Web3 “seems more marketing buzzword than reality right now”.     – ELON MUSK.

Quotes on WEB 3.0

	WEB 1.0 – STATIC WEB	WEB 2.0 – SOCIAL WEB	WEB 3.0 – SEMANTIC WEB
Time Period (Approx)	1989-2005	2005- present	Upcoming Era – the next stage of the web evolution
Term Coined By	Web 1.0 or Static Web was first coined by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.	The term ‘WEB 2.0’ was coined by Darcy DiNucci in 1999 and later popularized by Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty at the first O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 Conference in late 2004.	The term ‘WEB 3.0’ was coined in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood.
Characteristics	1. It includes static web pages and uses basic Hypertext Mark-Up Language 2. They have read-only content.	1. Web 2.0 is the term used to describe a variety of websites and applications that allow anyone to create and share online information or material they have created.   2. It allows people to create, share, collaborate & communicate.	1. It offers the ability to generate, connect, and share the content or information through search & analysis based on understanding the meaning of the words not by just numbers or keyword matching.   2. Web 3.0 would not be possible without the systems provided by Blockchain Technology.
Examples	Static Web Sites and Personal Sites.	Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, and various blogs, and so on.	Wolfram Alpha and Apple’s Siri.

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