In this article, I'll be discussing the evolution of the web, where its going and why it matters.
The Web Evolution
The Web has evolved a lot over the years and its applications are now almost unrecognizable from its inception. The evolution of the Web often breaks down into three distinct phases: Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0.
Web 1.0
Web 1.0 is the term used to refer to the first phase of development of the World Wide Web characterized by simple static websites.
Before 1999, experts called the Internet "ReadOnly" Web. The average role of the Internet user was limited to reading the information presented to him. The best examples of this Web 1.0 era are the millions of static websites that proliferated during the dot-com boom. There was neither active communication nor information flow from the consumer (of the information) to the producer (of the information), but the information age was born!
Four design essentials of a Web 1.0 site include:
- Static Pages: The pages did not offer interactive features that changed based on the behavior of website visitors. At that point, the websites were largely informative.
- Website content stored in files: Virtually all modern websites use a database to store most of the website content. During Web 1.0 this was not the case and most of the website content was stored directly in the website's web files, not in a separate database.
- Proprietary HTML tags: During Web 1.0, browsers attempted to differentiate themselves by offering support for proprietary tags, creating significant incompatibility issues between websites using those tags and site visitors using non-proprietary browsers (unsupported browsers).
- Frames and Tables used to position and align the elements on a page.
Web 2.0: The rise of social media.
Web 2.0 refers to a global website that highlights user-generated content, ease of use, and interoperability for end users. Web 2.0 is also known as the participatory social web. It does not refer to a change in a technical specification, but to the way in which websites are designed. The transition is beneficial, but it does not seem that when the changes happen, the Web 2.0 will enable interaction and collaboration in a social media dialogue as a creator of user-generated content in a virtual community. Web 1.0 is enhanced version of Web 2.0.
Web browser technologies are used in Web 2.0 development and they include AJAX and JavaScript frameworks. Recently, AJAX and JavaScript frameworks have become very popular means of building 2.0 websites.
Web2 is really simple, and because of its simplicity, more and more people are becoming creators around the world. The web as it is now is really cool in many ways, but there are some areas where we can do a lot better.
Four main features of Web 2.0:
Free information classification, which enables users to collect and classify information.
Dynamic content that responds to user input.
The flow of information between the site owner and site users is through evaluation and online feedback.
Access to the web raises a variety of concerns, from the traditional Internet user base to a wider variety of users.
Web 2.0 Usage:
The social web contains a number of online tools and platforms where people share their perspectives, opinions, thoughts and experiences. Web 2.0 applications tend to interact much more with the end user. As such, the end user is not only an app user but also a participant in these 8 tools below:
i. Podcasting
ii. Blogging
iii. Tagging
iv. Curating with RSS
v. Social Bookmarks
vi. Social Networks
vii. Social Media
vii. Tuning web content
What is Web 3.0?
It refers to the evolution of the use and interaction of the web, which includes the modification of the web into a database. It allows the updating of the web backend, after a long period of focus on the frontend (Web 2.0 is mainly about AJAX, tagging and another frontend of user experience innovation).
Web 3.0 is a term used to describe many changes in the use of the Web and the interaction between different paths. In this case, the data is not owned but shared with the services showing different views for the same website / data.
The Semantic Web (3.0) promises to build "the world's information" in a more meaningful way than Google can ever do with its existing engine system. This is especially true from the point of view of machine design versus human understanding. The semantic web requires the use of a declarative ontology language such as OWL to produce domain-specific ontologies that machines can use to reason about information and draw new conclusions, not just to match words- keys.
There are some fundamental differences between web2 and web3, but decentralization is central.
Web3 is improving the internet as we know it today with a few additional features. web3 is:
Confirmed/ verifiable
Trustless
Self-governing
No permissions
Widespread and solid
Stateful
Built-in native payments
In web3, developers typically create and distribute applications running on one server or storing their data in a single database (usually hosted and managed by a single cloud provider).
Instead, web3 applications run on blockchains,or on low-level networks of multiple peer-to-peer programs on peer nodes (servers), or a combination of the two that form the crypto economic protocol. These applications are often referred to as dapps (applications that are being distributed), and you will see that term often used in the web3 space.
To achieve a stable and secure network allocated space, network participants (developers) are encouraged and competitive to provide quality services to anyone using this service.
When you hear about web3, you will see that cryptocurrency is often part of the conversation. This is because cryptocurrency plays a major role in many of these processes. It provides financial incentives (tokens) to anyone who wants to participate in the construction, management, donation, or development of one of the projects itself.
These processes can often provide a variety of services such as computer, storage, bandwidth, ownership, hosting, and other web services that are often provided by cloud providers in the past.
People can earn a living by participating in protocol in a variety of ways, at both technical and non-technical levels.
Consumers of the service often pay to apply the rule of law, as well as how they will pay a cloud provider like AWS today. Without web3, money goes directly to network participants.
In this, as with many areas of decentralization, you will see that unnecessary and inefficient mediators are cut off.
Many web infrastructure protocols such as Filecoin, Livepeer, Arweave, and The Graph have issued service tokens that govern how the law works. These tokens also reward participants on many levels of the network. Even traditional blockchain protocols like Ethereum work this way.
Here are 5 main features that can help us define Web 3.0:
Semantic Web: The successful evolution of the web includes the semantic web. The Semantic Web enhances on-demand web technologies for creating, sharing, and connecting content through insight-based search and analysis. The meaning of words instead of keywords or numbers.
Artificial Intelligence: By combining this ability with natural language processing, Web 3.0 computers can differentiate information like humans to provide faster, more relevant results.
3D graphics: The three-dimensional design is being used widely in websites and services in Web 3.0. Museum guides, computer games, ecommerce, geospatial contexts, etc. are all examples that use 3D graphics.
Connectivity: With Web 3.0, information is better networked thanks to semantic metadata. As a result, the user experience evolves to another level of connectivity that leverages all the information available.
Ubiquity: Content is accessible via several applications, every device is connected to the Internet, services can be used anywhere.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Web3.0
Advantages of Web3.0:
Increased information linking: Semantic web will help in the connectivity of online data.
Efficient searching.
Better marketing.
More efficient web browsing.
Effective communication.
Change human interaction.
Disadvantages of Web3.0:
Less advanced devices will not be able to handle Web 3.0.
Web 1.0 websites will seem that much more obsolete.
It can be very complicated for newcomers to understand.
It is true that there are numerous challenges to Web3.0 implementation, the sheer innovation that it can convey to our lives is absolutely mind-blowing. While there is a lot of hype, we still want need some practical use-cases of Web 3 to surely recognize the superb modifications it can bring to our lives.