Web 0 were just major research centres and universities connected to eachother. Basic communication and dat asharing.
Web 1 was when the public at large were able to access the internet and able to publish basic web pages which were just text documents with special html formatting. The age when anyone could have a basic website hosted on home computer. The age when there were tens of competiting search engines and Google only came in to the game later (1998, about mid web1.0)
Web 2.0 is early 2000s, when web pages started to have additional functionality made with java and flash. The age where if you wanted to watch video that someone uploaded on to their blog, you had to download it on your disk. For refrence this started about just before 4chan first became a thing. It’ll be few years before youtube, Facebook, twitter became a thing. This was the age of MySpace. The mid web 2.0 is when proper commercialisation of Internet started; when ads started to become a thing that actually made money, the golden age of youtube. Late web 2.0 is when power started to accumulate to few major commercial operators, Google/Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook.
Web 3.0 is uto… dystopian dream of completely decentralised internet where ownership is strictly enforced by fundamental technological means, with blockchains, crypto, which define the truth and operates everything. A dream in which everything can ne word and transferred, where everything is an asset with appreciating value that can be sold and traded.
It’s a made-up term and some don’t even think it is well-defined yet.
A long time ago business folk started describing what the internet had become as “web 2.0”. This is acknowledging that some of the largest sites and services like Instagram, Reddit, and Discord revolve around *user-generated* content. “Web 1.0” was the equivalent of online newspapers and magazines. Those are still around, but marketers wanted a buzzword to describe social networks and “Web 2.0” was basically that.
The stuff circling “Web 3.0” involves pointing out that while content is user-generated in “Web 2.0”, the posts generally become the property of Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, etc. So even if I work hard on producing a video of me covering a song on Youtube, ultimately Youtube and their content policy describe how I can monetize it if at all. Web 3.0 is an attempt to create a web where I can post content in a “decentralized” manner, meaning there’s not any one content host who controls it. A lot of stuff claiming to be “Web 3.0” is using blockchain technology to do this.
But there are some good questions Web 3.0 hasn’t really answered.
For one, it doesn’t cover why Web 3.0 is much different from Web 1.0, where if I wanted to write a blog instead of using a site like Tumblr I’d pay for some server space and run a blog application. People were posting and hosting content in Web 1.0, but they were doing it on small personal sites at their own expense. Web 2.0 took off because it offered more or less infinite space for hosting in return for loss of ownership. Web 3.0 seems to only be returning to the 1.0 philosophy and using blockchain tech to try and say it’s unique.
Further, a lot of Web 3.0 stuff is questionably decentralized. The various crypto systems have their own blockchains, but it’s really hard to work with all of them if you aren’t using a service like OpenSea. And if you are using something like OpenSea, to some extent they manage your wallet for you and that means they can revoke your access to it the same way Facebook can block you from your content. I can’t tell OpenSea that I own my wallet and it should only act as a client for data on my devices, it works the other way around.
So Web 3.0 is harder to define. When people came up with “web 2.0” the experts nodded and said, “Yeah, it makes sense, we’ve changed how we look at the internet.” But now that Web 3.0 is proposed, most of the experts are tilting their head and saying, “You aren’t really delivering on your promises and this looks a lot like Web 1.0.”
Web 1: Original internet. Things weren’t interactive, and pretty much the only thing you could interact with were hyperlinks.
Web 2: Interactive and dynamic websites. Pretty much what we know as the modern internet.
Web 3: The buzzword people are using to hype up blockchain tech like NFTs. It might be Web 3, but there’s a good chance that Web 3 will be something else entirely though.
We really only realize a transition has happened once we’re in the middle of it though. Before then it’s just “cool, there’s some new things,” and nobody knows what will be the next big thing. The fact that NFTs and stuff are pretty new, yet people are already calling it “Web 3,” makes me think it’s just marketing trying to make it sound like the future, whether than the actual future.
Historically computer power has gone through “location” cycles. When hardware and software are new/expensive multiple users log into a central massive and expensive computer for access. When hardware and software get cheaper, computing power gets dispersed and singular users log into singular computers.
Mainframe (expensive computing power)
Personal computers (cheap computing power)
Cloud hosting (web 2, expensive internet connection)
Distributed hosting (web 3, cheap internet connection)
“Web3” is a marketing campaign for Ponzi schemes. It’s meant to make you feel “left out” if you are not yet bought into the speaker’s Ponzi scheme.
That’s all.
Really.
…
No, there’s nothing more there. It’s all about whether you have paid actual money to the scam that the user of the term has bought into, and thus whether you have helped them escape profitably rather than losing money.
The correct answer is, of course, that any promoter of a Ponzi scheme is a felon; regardless of whether they are also a victim of that same scam.
Web 1.0 is the original awkward version (full page reloads… Text and blue links… Geocities)
Web 2.0 was about interactive apps (think Google maps)
Web 3.0 is about separating money from people. And doing it at massive scale. It’s capitalism without the pesky need to actually produce a good or service- you’re purely selling an idea.
Web2 leaves all the data for a site on a single server with probably a backup or two whatever is on the single mai server is what is shown when you connect to the site. Web3 puts it on hundreds (or less or more depending on things) of different servers, and whatever 51% or more agree on is what is shown when you connect to the site.
Theoretically, it means the site is unhackable and in-DDOSable unless you hit a whole ton of servers all at the same time.
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