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Have You Been Wondering What Web 3.0 Is?
If youâve been hanging out with techie friends at a conference lately, youâve probably heard the term âWeb 3.0.â And if you havenât yet, you probably will soon. But if itâs one of those questions youâre a little ashamed to ask, donât be. Not many people know what Web 3.0 is, so itâs understandable if youâre confused.
On top of that, a really succinct description and tight enough narrative have yet to emerge, making its definition open to interpretation. Experts are also still arguing over what pertains to Web 3.0 and what will come way in the future.
Back to Basics â Web 1.0 And Web 2.0
While weâre on the subject of Web 3.0, a quick recap on Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 might come in handy. People are starting to refer to the internet in different stages as its capabilities and how we interact with it evolve.
Think back to the early days with a dial-up connection where you could read stuff online and maybe send an email. Web 1.0 was one-directional. There was little interaction and the information was broadcast to us by corporations and media.
Company websites were monologues of lengthy product descriptions and stuffy corporate rhetoric. âAbout Usâ pages filled with vapid cliches about âgoing the extra mile,â and customers being âat the center of everything we do.â
Internet sources werenât trusted in universities. You still had to hit the library to find books to reference in your thesis. Copyscape didnât exist. MySpace wasnât born yet, and the Y2K bug was a really big deal. Getting a website designed was also an extremely lengthy and expensive process.
Web 2.0 took us to a whole new level, characterized by people interacting with websitesâand each otherâmore. Social media rules the roost. Peer to peer reviews are one of the most important buying decisions, with 90 percent of customers reading online reviews before purchasingâand 88 percent of them trusting them as much as a personal recommendation.
The sharing economy allows us to stay in other peopleâs houses and rent out our cars. Anyone can get a website and upload their voice to the internet, whether in writing or recording. YouTube has almost 1.5 billion users worldwide and as of 2016, there were around 300 million personal blogs registered. And we now access the web from our handhelds more than our desktops.
So, What is Web 3.0?
So, now we know all about that, what changes can we expect to see as we move towards Web 3.0, the next evolution of the internet? Coined by The New York Times reporter John Markoff in 2006, the concept of Web 3.0 isnât actually new.
Web 3.0 will bring about a further shift in how we create and interact with websites. But is it here yet? And what exactly does it involve?
IoT and the Internet of Everything
If you have a smart refrigerator, use Alexa, own a baby monitor, speaker, or some other device that connects to the web, youâve already used IoT technology. While IoT technology has been slow to get off the ground and is not without its problems (just ask Jeep), itâs a strong characteristic of Web 3.0. A concept otherwise known as âubiquity.â
The internet will no longer only be on your desktop like with Web 1.0, or your smartphone, like Web 2.0. It will be everywhere, so prepare yourself for entire saturation. In fact, Web 3.0 may as well be called the web of everything and everywhere, as most things around you are connected online.
Our current infrastructure doesnât quite support this yet, however. Our devices are too slow and too insecure. No one wants to risk getting their cardiac device hacked into, or losing control of their vehicle while driving. But itâs a taste of whatâs to come in Web 3.0.
Artificial Intelligence
In Web 3.0, computers will show characteristics of human intelligence, such as decision making and learning. Companies like Facebook and Google have been using AI for some time already to organize Big Data and optimize advertising.
According to the University of Maastricht, âMachine learning algorithms are widely employed and are encountered daily. Examples are automatic recommendations when buying a product or voice recognition software that adapts to your voice.â
Thanks to machine learning, computers are becoming more advanced and can process and understand information in a much more human way. And if you consider the above example, we can already speak something fairly complex into our phones and get an acceptable answer back. This will only get better.
And just think about LinkedIn Messaging. The chat offers predicted responses generated by machine learning, based on what you might reply. It reads the language and formulates suggestions based on the scanned text. This shows everyday applied AI in use. Pretty cool, right?
AI, like blockchain, can also remove the human factor from, say, websites that are popular because of fake reviews or manipulated search results. And in fact, blockchain technology may also be instrumental to Web 3.0, allowing users to interact and removing trust issues through smart contracts.
Talk of Web 3.0 often throws up mentions of the âsemantic web,â which is almost like an extension of AI. The semantic web is basically a way in which information is categorized and stored so that a computer can understand it as well as a human. The semantic web will teach computers what the data means, so that AI can be born.
3D Graphics
Considering this is Web 3.0, weâll need more 3D graphics to accompany it. Here other technologies like AR and VR will also come into play â computer games and apps using 3D, for example.
Also, 3D printing will step up and become more accessible to all, not just large labs with big budgets. These are all components of the next wave of evolution in the web.
Final Thoughts
Much like AI and blockchain, thereâs more marketing hype around Web 3.0 than actual, practical use cases right now. People have even been led to believe that Web 3.0 will form virtual cities and 3D shopping malls.
But, just like eradicating poverty and decentralizing the world, these things may be a long way off still, perhaps pertaining to Web 4.0.
So, the takeaway on Web 3.0 is: donât believe all the hype. Just like the multitudes of products that claim to use AI and are only backed by an algorithm, Web 3.0 isnât everywhere yet. But it wonât be too long before it is.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of Bitcoin Insider. Every investment and trading move involves risk - this is especially true for cryptocurrencies given their volatility. We strongly advise our readers to conduct their own research when making a decision.