The world wide web has undergone multiple transformations throughout its history and its evolution continues to accelerate at a breakneck pace. The first incarnation, Web 1.0, came online in the early 1990s and ran until approximately 2004. Web 1.0 was a pioneering age that was termed the “information superhighway” that was just a content delivery network, or CDN, and was about basic connectivity and hyperlinks.
Whereas Web 1.0 was relatively static, Web 2.0 took the world by storm with its dynamic content of vibrant and animated web pages, interactivity between users, and video and music sharing capabilities. Web 2.0 broke the sound barrier when it left Web 1.0 behind. Web 3.0 promises to be light years ahead of Web 2.0 by offering more portable and personal “smart” applications including groundbreaking blockchain, artificial intelligence, and decentralized protocols.
Web 2.0 vs Web 3.0
- Web 2.0
Web 2.0 helped to define the web as a new communication and entertainment medium as a host of progressive technologies redefined the web from its nascent beginnings. Web 2.0 exposed millions of current web users to new technologies and attracted millions more people to the online world. Web 2.0 immediately set itself apart from traditional print and video by introducing new forms of information sharing, interactivity, and creativity.
New concepts like blogging became wildly popular, and social network sites like Friendster, MySpace, and then Facebook began to emerge. Shareyourworld broke new ground being the first online video-sharing site but has gone the ways of the dinosaurs with other sites like Vimeo, Rumble, and leviathan YouTube providing a place for users to share virtually all types of videos.
A plethora of new computing languages changed how web pages looked and what each could do. The evolution of Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, gave developers more control to enable more complex design layouts. Ajax, short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, allowed mapping applications like Mapquest and Google Maps to manipulate the map image so users could zoom and scroll to find specific locations.
- Web 3.0
Because it is still in its infancy, the term “Web 3.0” is very loosely defined. Also referred to Web3, there are even debates as to how and when the terms were created. Originally, Berners-Lee began using the term Web 3.0 in 2006 to specify what he called the “semantic web.” However, in 2014 Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, began calling the next web evolution as “Web3” within the context of cryptocurrency.
The World Wide Web Consortium, abbreviated W3C, has been working to create some universal standards and concepts of the semantic web. The new standards are meant to establish new ways of linking data and content together so artificial intelligence can help connect data and websites instead of linking content based on just keywords. However, the term Web 3.0 goes far beyond just semantic-web concepts as put forth by the W3C and is more often used when referring to higher-level concepts like decentralization.
As with Web 1.0, Web 2.0 uses centralized databases to store and disseminate information. This means all information for a particular application or website is on a single server or bank of servers in one primary location. However, Web 3.0 is conceived of and built on decentralized, peer-to-peer platforms using consensus algorithms. Many people are confused by the word “algorithm”; however, an algorithm is easily explained as just a set of instructions a computer follows. An essential component of the distributed consensus, or decentralization, for Web 3.0 is in the form of blockchain technology.
- Blockchain and Web 3.0
Blockchain is most easily defined as a shared and unchangeable ledger that aids in and allows for the recording of transactions and the tracking of assets across a business network. Virtually anything of value can be tracked and traded on a blockchain network, and assets can be tangible, such as cash, or intangible, like intellectual property, such as copyrights. While there are many applications of blockchain technology, a big part of the push for decentralization with Web 3.0 is for more secure financial transactions. All of the world’s cryptocurrencies run on blockchain technology. Blockchain is one of the most dynamic applications associated with Web 3.0 and is causing web3 recruiting firms to clamor to find enough engineers to fill all the new positions it requires.
The Future of Web
While Web 3.0 is still in its infancy, today’s emerging applications can provide an inferential window through which the technologies of tomorrow may be deduced. Web 3.0 may come to include an entirely new set of internet standards that completely change how the web works, or it may just hold over the pieces of Web 2.0 that work best and add new technologies that complement the old.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol, or HTTP, which has long been based on the original TCP/IP, or Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, is a suite of communication rules used to connect network devices. The third HTTP version, HTTP/3, is an emerging standard for the Internet Engineering Task Force and will provide more web resilience, performance, and improved scalability.
Web 1.0 relied on the IPv4 address class that could only support a limited number of web addresses; this is the same basic protocol used in Web 2.0. This results in bottlenecks during times of heavy web traffic and causes slowdowns in data transfer. In contrast, the new IPv6 protocol has a much larger address space that will support far more devices in Web 3.0, with each device having its own public IP address.
Web 3.0 will majorly affect the entire gaming industry by revolutionizing how players are rewarded. Blockchain technology, NTFs, or non-fungible tokens, will allow players to acquire in-game assets that have value outside the game and can be traded for other assets. This one technology will give video game studios, game engineers, and video game recruiters plenty to focus on when trying to meet the demand of the changing web.
Unlike web 2.0, which was dependent on centralized control, one of the concepts Web 3.0 is based on is the decentralized autonomous organization or DAO. Similar to blockchain, DAOs are a new web organization structure that relies on distributed consensus to make decisions instead of a centralized authority. This may lead to new decentralized financial services that may, in turn, circumvent traditional banking structures, resulting in a profound effect on worldwide financial markets.
As decentralization becomes more proliferated, automation and artificial intelligence will likely be the foundation for what is to come. Artificial intelligence or AI in Web 3.0 will help to improve workflow and overall user experience. This will be facilitated by enabling greater scalability and performance across the web itself by powering new forms of intelligent search functions and interactions.
When comparing Web 2.0 vs. Web 3.0, it is crucial to remember that the web has grown in ways and at a pace that few people could have imagined back when Web 1.0 first came online in the 90s and will continue to evolve as new technologies are invented. However, while these new technologies will continually change the face and the behavior of the web, the basic concept of a vast network of interconnected computers that share information will always remain the core of the World Wide Web.
