Here’s a quick summary:
Web 1.0 (static web)
- Time: 1991 → 2004
- Medium: Desktop and laptop computers.
- User experience: The internet was mainly read-only (think browsing a static encyclopedia). Different people generally had the same experience browsing content online (I had the same experience on yahoo.com that you had).
- Data ownership: Website hosts own their own provided data (e.g. a company owns the data for the recipe they put online). At this point in time, users generally didn’t create any user-generated content (e.g. Facebook post) and website hosts didn’t collect any user activity data (e.g. search queries, user behavior).
Web 2.0 (dynamic web)
- Time: 2004 → now
- Medium: Computers, smart phones, IoT.
- User experience: The internet became read/write. In addition to consuming information on the internet, people whether they knew it or not, provided information to the internet (e.g. intentionally via posting tweets or sending emails or posting Youtube videos, and unintentionally by making searches and interacting on sites like Facebook, Google, Amazon). Website hosts could use user-generated content and collected user activity data to derive new insights from aggregated trends to tailor different experiences to different users (e.g. my Facebook feed or Amazon ads are different from yours).
- Data ownership: Website hosts own their own provided data AND the user-generated content, user activity data, and derived data of their users. While hosts own this data, they are required by law to allow users to “control” (download and delete) their data at a user’s request.
Web 3.0 (decentralized web)
- Time: now → future
- Medium: Who knows, the same and maybe more.
- User experience: The internet is becoming read/write/own/influence. NFTs allow digital ownership: content you create is verifiably agreed to be yours (e.g. if you post a picture, the internet agrees that you are the owner, even if someone else copies it). Open-source dApps empower users to choose which apps they actually trust to use (e.g. someone chooses apps that disallow censorship, or cannot block payments between users). DAOs provide digital influence: disparate and anonymous people can make trusted and coordinated decisions together (e.g. bid on a physical original copy of the constitution and decide how to store and preserve it). Wallets enable privacy: users can create as many identities as they want and switch between or combine them. To sum, users will have more authority over their digital lives than ever before. Each piece alone is valuable. How these pieces combine will define the next decade.
- Data ownership: User-generated content is now owned by the people that create it. Users have the ability to choose or avoid using apps that may collect user activity data. And unlike Web 2.0, identity can be private. Users can own their data authoritatively, privately, and anonymously.
Into the metaverse
Thanks to Zuck, “metaverse” is a buzzy word these days. But with the advent of Web 3.0, it is more relevant than ever. Getting to some (positive looking) Ready Player One capable version of the metaverse will take a long time and will require huge leaps across hardware and software stacks ranging from improved network infrastructure (e.g. 6g) to enhanced human interface technologies (e.g. wearables, gesture, haptic) to spacial computing advancements (e.g. VR/AR/XR) to amazing new game engines. But Web 3.0 gets us part of the way there. Web 3.0 brings many aspects of physical world to the internet for the first time.
