'Web 3.0 is here' everyone says, but how did we get here?
Before getting started on web3, the web itself has an interesting backstory.
THE WEB
Almost everyone, if not everyone has at a point used a 'www' or at least tried to find something with a search engine(Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo).
WWW(World-Wide-Web) generally known as the web, sits on top of the internet. It retrieves information identified by URLs(Uniform Resource Locators) or simply known as 'web addresses', an example of this is abc.xyz .
The web isn't itself the internet, a lot of people wrongly use them interchangeably, the Internet is the global network of connected computers, while the web is a collection of interconnected resources linked by URLs.
Tim Berners-Lee co-invented the web with Robert Cailliau in 1989. The purpose of the web at the time was to make it easy for internet users to find data and resources across the growing interconnected network of computers(the internet). This gave birth to the first generation of the web(Web 1.0).
Evolution of Web Technologies
Earlier, we learned the web was built to allow users on a network share resources. As humans, the better our understanding and use of the web became, the better we needed the web to become.
Web 1.0 (1989-2005) This was the static web, I would more like call it the largely read-only web. The majority of web users at this time only got to view and access resources on the web, while a select few put that information on the internet.
At this point, there were no search engines to help users find relevant pages, CSS(a language for styling webpages) and Javascript(a language providing webpages with functionality) were both non-existent. The web mostly functioned as a place for universities and large companies to share information.
Web 2.0 (2005 - now) This brought about the birth of social media, it allowed users to create media content for the internet, smartphones and personal computers got more powerful, hence we could now properly interact with the web. CSS and Javascript became a thing and brought web pages to life.
The internet's infrastructure and user devices had become better. This enabled startups to take advantage of this new power and push the limits of the web. Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Wikipedia and the likes began to spring up.
Web 3.0 (slowly rolling in) This represents the next stage of web evolution. The features promised include decentralization, collection and use of big data, artificial intelligence, a higher level of personalized experiences on the web, machine-to-machine communications and other features. Web3 is still in its development phase.
Tim Berners-Lee called web 3.0 the 'semantic web' and hopes it is the web generation that gets smart enough to require little to no human intervention to perform certain complex events/tasks in the future.
Defining Web 3.0
Web 3.0 is still developing and not fully here yet. There is also no agreed-upon definition as it is still in its iterative stage. One thing I find funny though is the number of people that are anti-web3, claiming no such thing exists, and at the same time, the sheer number of individuals that would give their life to defend the presence/arrival of web3, pointing out cases like cryptocurrencies, IPFS, DAOs and the likes.
My take on this would be, web3 is not really about what we can see and do right now, there is still so much yet to come. I also don't think the debate is necessary yet and also I don't think web3 is a stand-alone evolvement, it is still fully adherent to the general Internet protocols and uses a lot of pre-existing web2 technologies and infrastructures, like we said earlier, this is just another stage of development.
Web 3.0 is a merger of different technologies like Machine learning, Data Analysis, Decentralized Ledger Technology, etcetera, in the hope that the web as a whole gets smarter, faster, better and with improved security and better data control for users.
Features of Web 3.0
Web 3.0 aims to improve the internet, how we use it and what we build on it. These are some of its promising core features;
Decentralization
Artificial Intelligence
Virtual and Augmented reality
Connectivity (Internet of things)
Machine-to-Machine Communication
Getting Involved with web 3.0
Web3 isn't just about cryptocurrencies or the crypto ecosystem, though the area has a lot of active interest, active builders and active participants. It is just one of the features web 3.0 promises. I think cryptocurrencies and NFTs have gotten public attention due to the 'extreme' financial incentive it has brought in for early adopters and has also provided a taste of what decentralization feels and tastes like.
In other areas, technologies are improving the standard and ease of living. Artificial intelligence for example has gotten a lot of adoption and has slowly gotten integrated into our everyday life experiences.
Google uses AI to improve page ranking and indexing, which in turn improves search results for users. Spotify, Netflix, and Youtube all use AI to understand our preferences and try to make suggestions based on that.
Voice assistants like Google Assistant, Bixby, Siri, and Alexa, all improve our lives by being there to assist with certain tasks throughout the day.
Artificial Intelligence also runs in semi-driverless cars like Tesla, Waymo, Lucid, etcetera. They help companies identify and sort things on a very large scale. There are lots of possible applications in the space.
Then there are virtual and augmented reality used in applications like Snapchat, Meta's Oculus, HTC's Vive and Valve's Index devices and the like.
The web is improving and becoming smarter every day, with new technologies and even newer ways to use old technology, it would only get better.
It's a great time to be alive.