The shape of WEB things to come

Over the past twenty-five years, the digital world has undergone explosive growth, spectacularly migrating to areas such as education, research, data analytics, AI, communication, entertainment, navigation, and much more. In the early 90s, when the concept of email made a humble debut, it was almost a curiosity and a preserve of the elite. From that promising dawn of digital efflorescence, the world has come a long way and now the internet has become an integral part of our daily life. And the utility and applicability of information superhighways have widened in terms of quality, speed, and relevance. The major milestones on the superhighway are worth a revisit indeed. This is an area that undergoes tremendous evolution, and the common man is puffing to catch up with the evolving vistas. Big money is involved, and the names involved are also astounding. From the level of mobile apps and social media platforms, our civilization is bracing to take another momentous leap. This platform is practically in a perpetual revolution mode.?

The milestones?

As of now, we can discern three distinct phases in the internet revolution:?

Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and,?Web 3.0.

Web 1.0 (1990 to 2004) was primarily a one-way read-only process and the beneficiaries were content searchers. Different websites offered information in the form of text or images. There was almost no room for interaction and the static file system offered pretty little space for maneuverability.

Web 2.0, on the other hand, is raging today, boisterously barging its way into almost all spheres of economic and cultural activity, and adding a new dimension to social connectivity and data transfer. The present generation is attuned to and at home with Web 2.0, and most of the social activities have boiled down to multiple interactive social networks, defying time and space. Here, the interaction is a two-way process and numerous apps are in place to make anybody a creator and a provider of information. From the level of texts and images, this stage took us to an exalted level of audio-visual communication, reinventing the space of the glitzy humdrum tinsel world, globally. The centuries-old tradition of printed books took a serious drubbing and a quantum shift to the digital world happened quite dramatically. The fora available for self-expression multiplied and the horizon is ever-widening offering new chances and challenges.?This way, Web 2.0 (2004 to 2014) was apparently a revolution and it became a stunning success because the Internet reached out to almost all sections of the society.?

The platform offers promising avenues for businesses and income generation. Viewership could easily be translated to revenue. Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many other organizations have proved to be big money-spinning machines, very much organic in nature. Here each click on the site is turned into revenue and the visitor becomes an innocent pawn in a larger game.?

Another pitfall is that the privacy of the visitor is compromised. Data is money and data of individuals could be sold like hotcakes. In closed societies and in the countries where the state employs its terror machines to snub and silence its citizens, the life and security of people can be at risk, when an individual’s privacy is encroached upon unwittingly. In addition to one’s private space being violated, the ramifications include punitive measures by the state machinery and bamboozled in the banking operations.?

Web 3.0

Web 3.0 is the natural progression of Web 2.0, and here some of the evils embedded in the former incarnation are neutralized and the operational dimension is further expanded.?Though the real picture is yet to evolve, in terms of practicalities, Web 3.0 (a term introduced by Tim Berners-Lee in 1999) is going to be heavily rooted in Blockchain technology and the digital economy where cryptocurrency is poised to play a critical role.?

The fundamental lure of Web 3.0 is perhaps its decentralized functionality. The players here do not build and deploy applications that run on a single server and do not store their data in a single cloud database. Furthermore, it is verifiable, trustless (no third-party involvement), autonomous (no state-level permission is required), gate-checks free, scattered and robust, and characterized by ease of business. The applications run on blockchains or networks of lateral nodes or a combination of both. The regime of dapps (decentralized apps) is capacitated to offer reliable and value-added services moderated by a crypto-economic protocol. Already cryptocurrency has become a buzzword in the discerning circles, incentivizing the entire gamut of operations. The high-end services such as computing, storing, bandwidth offering, hosting, and other web services could be decentralized and democratized. Big players will give way to a swarm of local autonomous players. Here money transfer becomes essentially linear and intermediary sub-routes are done away with. The payment pathways will become smooth, direct, and by far transparent. In fact, monetization will give way to tokenization, another terminology coined by the new era of data transfer.?

The prospects?

Web 3.0 offers a fabulous space for developers, creators, and entrepreneurs with potential for innovation. And on the ground, this avatar is likely to burst the bubble of a big tech monopoly. AI/ML technologies are likely to get a prominent role in the critical and strategic realms of predictive analytics, data management, and intelligent decision-making. In the emerging world, once again through decentralization, data transfer would be more human-centric than tech giant-centric. The regional nature of transactions and interactions adds to credibility and trust, especially in rural and quasi-urban environments. An increase in the regional level players will contribute to the real dissemination of business to the bottom strata of the social pyramid. Furthermore, data transfer and sharing would have more privacy and security.?

To get more insights into Blockchain technology and emerging trends across various technology landscapes, you are invited to visit Relecura.com?

Here is an auto-generated report on Blockchain!

https://tracker.relecura.com/index.php/dashboard/openShareLink/a96b3c2c8fe63006231bcffa8f61e393