Evolution of Internet and Web3.0

My first interaction with the Internet was in the very late 90s and mostly it was one-way traffic with static content. It was like a newspaper where you consume the details. This was all great from a research and information perspective. The content was loaded by these companies on their server for people to consume. Experts call this era Web1 or Web1.0

In 2004 when Facebook debuted, the internet was revolutionized where consumers became content creators. Now people were creating their own content via posts, pictures, videos. It brought in a whole revolution, companies like YouTube, TikTok, etc worked on the content created by individuals. A big portion of the world’s population started producing a digital footprint. In this era (which will continue for many more years) these internet companies (let's call them web service providers) started collecting content and data from individuals and using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning started monetizing that. This era is termed Web2 or Web 2.0.

Web2.0 era is mostly good for consumers but controlled by WebService provider (via their algorithms) and have been alleged by various groups to influence sales, political opinion, and loosely protecting personal data. While Web2 was free to consumers, they became products (mostly without knowledge) because data was controlled by service providers via their data centers centrally (or via edge) controlled by them. Service providers could deny services based on their policies, political interference, or other reasons. When these services went down, the economy (mostly the gig economy) suffered. There are always challenges with regulations catching up on technology.

The next generation of the internet (Web3) being talked about is decentralizing this stuff around hosting based on Blockchain Technology. User content in Web3, which could be of the form Digital Art, Code, Music, Video, Financial Transaction is loaded on a decentralized network connected peer-to-peer via blockchain technology. This is not controlled by one person or organization. If you remember the Torrent of earlier days with blockchain technology behind this p-2-p network. Metaverse Crypto, NFT, DeFI (Decentralized Finance), etc are based on blockchain and are seen as bringing the next technology and business revolution.

Decentralization and Trustless network are the biggest positives and negatives for web3.0. Governments around the world are looking to regulate (at least the cryptocurrency part) but at the same time governments and organizations are keen to utilize the underlying technology of smart contracts for land record-keeping, KYC, etc.

The way I see is while Web1 democratized information. Prior to this third-world countries had late or no easy source of information. Web2 democratized the content & talent (and we see content like Squid Games from S. Korea in a much bigger way). Web3 will bring equality as the creator of NFT, when sells his/her content will receive payment as the same tokens (money) irrespective of geography, gender, color, nationality, etc.

It's fair to say that Web3 is hazy at the moment and there is a lot of excitement as well as cynicism. The technology-based transformation has been very fast. There was no iPhone/Android or Facebook 20 years back and now our lives revolve around those.

Let me know what’s your take on web3, crypto, blockchain, or NFT