Web 3.0 Over Blockchain: Reclaiming The Nostalgia

Prologue

Web 3.0, a phrase coined in year 2006, is being bandied about since then. A decade has gone by, and yet the moniker is still trying to find its meaning and means to shape itself. No matter how do we choose to define it; in essence, it is going to be a web connecting everything in this world - the living and the non-living - where computing devices will be more aware of the environment, context, interaction and usage patterns.

The new web will transform the internet infrastructure from traditional supportive role to a protagonist entity in web content processing and decision making.

While this will see a rise of machines, this will also witness an explosion in internet data. Our digital self, today, is some bits of fragmented information. But in the world of tomorrow, our digital self will grow to become us. Wandering the vastness of web, fraught with the danger of being mutated or altered, our digital clones would be consumed and monetized by hackers and organizations having farms of internet devices. This poses a grave threat of security and invasion for any individual, group or organization.?

The flaws of the existing platform may lead to a digital dystopia. It seems imperative to have a decentralized platform; which has no central control, is unhackable and maintains privacy!

The Becoming

If we want to know the future of web, we must consult its past.

A walk down the history lane

In Sept '94, Berners-Lee, creator of the web, made the web ecosystem available freely for its easy public adoption. And thus the Web 1.0 was born. The early web constituted simple text pages with minimal interaction. The then-existing-ecosystem and cost made it hard to create content and mostly some organizations were creating and maintaining their web pages.

With the advent of Web 2.0; the web became highly interactive, produced rich information including videos, audios. It revolutionized every business and industry. To name a few; banking, shopping, traveling, renting, medicines, education, literature, entertainment, collaboration, professional and social networking are all available online. These services also built strong feedback mechanism to collect user's data. There was also a rise in platforms like Wikipedia, Blogs, Social Networks (Facebook, twitter etc), Instagram and YouTube, which made it easy for everybody to produce their own content on the web.

With Web 2.0, the distinction between content producer and consumer is blurred.

Companies are providing their services and products through web which everyone is consuming. Alongside we are feeding the web with our interests, opinion, views, comments. Which is consumed by companies for analysis to improve their services and products. Our data on web has become an invaluable asset for every business. It has completed the loop, we consume the products and the products consume us. This is the era of Business of Attention which has caused an explosion in personal data on the web.

The web grew to uncomprehending enormity. Let's see how does our web look today!

Let's Get Datafied

Today half of the globe is on internet. (Source)

Number of indexed web pages have grown 5 times in last 6 years. (Source)

We produce 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day at our current pace, but that pace is only accelerating. In last two years alone 90 percent of overall web data was generated. (Forbes)

These numbers give us the sense of uncomprehending enormity that the web has grown to. The next web must provide us means to make sense out of this obscured and ever-growing vastness.

Web 3.0: The Web of Tomorrow

With Web 3.0 computing device would become ingenious and a protagonist entity. All the IoT devices would become the producer of events, actions, content. They along with the web hosting and computing devices would become consumer of the content to be able to acquire knowledge, provide information which is contextually meaningful, do analysis, help in decision making and initiate required actions.

The Unbecoming

Today, web has become the way of life for us. On an average, we spend close to 4 hours everyday online (Source). As we search, read, watch, listen, interact, upload, download, work, research, plan, travel, consume any service or do any activity; our every move is watched by various web service providers with or without our consent. Our digital self are being harvested in the farm of internet machines for trade. They live there without our control on them and without adequate protection. It gets only worse, as we enter into the space of Web 3.0 and IoT happens. We will be connected with machines more than ever. Consequently, our digital selves will grow to become us and in control of those, owning the farm of internet machines. The ill-consequences of all this is hard to overestimate.

There are enough instances and evidences to realize that large organizations and government bodies attempt to stretch and overstep their authority. And thus entrusting our information to organizations in general is a fundamentally broken model. The chance of an organization not meddling with our data is merely the effort required minus the expected gains. Given they have an income model that requires them knowing as much about people as possible; the realist will realize that the potential for covert misuse is hard to overestimate.

Besides, as the data resides with these organizations; data protection from theft is of utmost importance to avoid any misuse from any hacker. If you ever thought that your data is somewhat safe; as we proceed, you will realize, how threatening the reality is!

Being Datafied Again!

A glimpse of world's biggest breaches in recent past. Click on the image to read details.

Data breaches are projected to become close to 3 times just in a matter of 5 years.

Cost of data breach is in trillions and is projected to grow 5 times just in a matter of 5 years.

These numbers look alarming and leaves us thinking if the web is broken! Has the utopian 90's web been replaced by digital feudalism? Is there any hope for salvation?

The Inevitable

The Web, as envisioned, was not controlled by any authority, organization or individual.

The Democratic Web: Of the people, By the people and For the people.

In its early days, few organizations produced the content while rest just consumed. There was no central control on the data produced or consumed. The content resided with its creator and was owned by them.

Web 2.0 brought in radical changes in web usage In the hindsight, it also led to shift in control on data from the creator to web service providers, as the data produced by all of us resided on their machines.

All the instances of data misuse and data breaches are bespeaking of the evil inside. One might think of GDPR enforcement as the salvation. But enforcement is only suppressive, it can alleviate but not eliminate the problem.

"Peace produced by suppression is neither natural nor permanent."

Amidst this digital chaos, the advent of blockchain caught immediate attention as privacy and decentralization is intrinsic to this platform. Though blockchain shows the promise, it requires an overhaul of the existing ecosystem to turn it into a decentralized web. There has been some efforts going on towards that; however, disruption of this scale is a long haul. So, we may not see complete decentralization happening anytime soon, instead the web likely will be fragmented and will stay that way for a while.

The Fragmented Web

The Centralized Web is going to exist in its current form and shape - for, it is the usual way and proven system to run business. The Intersecting Web is mainly centralized but with some goodness of decentralized system e.g. transparency, immutability, provenance, eliminating middle man, simplifying business network etc. The Decentralized Web is purist, adopting the philosophy of no central control.

Return, Reclaim, Restore, Rebuild

So far we have learned a great deal, and we have learned a great deal that's alarming. While the usual way creeps in and settles within, yet we know that set methods have only set results. If we recognize the threat that is lurking around, we will realize that the web must evolve. Caught up with the idea of the utopian people's web, until just yesterday, we didnt know of the means to acheive it. Amidst all this, with the advent of blockchain, the idea of decentralized web have caught the imagination of few and an attempt is being made to take that nostalgic turn and restore the good old decentralized people's web.

We, humans ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus the events of future resemble those of preceding time.

The Decentralized Web, arguably, will fix the flaws of existing platform. It will restore the old democratic web by decentralizing existing web ecosystem and returning the control of data to its rightful owner - It's creator!

The Decentralized Web will be free from any central control. And thus it will set people free from being watched, spied upon, directed, checked, regulated, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, or commanded.

If it sounds Anarchic! It's just democracy taken more seriously!

This scale of disruption requires a revolution. And revolutionize, we must, to rid the dread.

Revolution is our obligation and our hope for evolution.

There is an ongoing effort to consolidate and build technology to provide the platform for decentralized web, which will be based on blockchain. Here is a diagram describing technology stack for a decentralized web - the web of future - the web 3.0. The diagram also names some of the technologies that are being built across the stack.

The idea of decentralized web is undying. The new web is slowly taking its shape and will continue to grow hereafter.

Let's Return, Reclaim, Restore and Rebuild !