Web 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 – What it means to you and me……

CryptoAware Blog post about Web 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. What are they and what do the mean to you?

By Crypto Aware Last updated Jul 30, 2022

Web 1.0 – The shopping carts & static web

Many think of the Internet before 1999 as the “Read-Only” web. The average internet user’s role was limited to reading the information which was presented in a format determined by the publisher. In the early days, publishers were students, innovators, enthusiasts and members of the general public with an interest in the technology. Internet adoption needed to get businesses involved and these gradually embraced the World Wide Web as a marketing tool to show off their products and services.

The best examples of this 1.0 web era are millions of static websites which mushroomed during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. There was little or no active communication or information flow from consumer and customers of products and services needed to use the more traditional methods of interaction for purchases.

Tim Berners-Lee (father of the World Wide Web) describes the first implementation of the web (Web 1.0) as the “read-only web.” Nevertheless, Web 1 was changing rapidly. For early adoption to be successful, businesses needed to use it to reach a wider audience to sell their products and the early shopping carts and online purchase systems became prevalent. However, interaction was still only one way. You visited a website to read and or buy something.

Alan Webber the founding editor form Fast Company Magazine, puts it very well:

Web 2.0 – The writing and participating web

The general consensus for defining Web 2.0 is that it is exactly the same as Web 1.0 but more interactive. We were able to interact with it more efficiently to help us determine the information we wanted to consume and help the publisher deliver it more effectively. For instance, Amazon have a very useful recommendation engine. … customers who bought this also bought that…., or the ability to store your personal preferences in your account (of whatever website you had an account with). It isn’t that we were able to read AND write to the Web, it was more interactive and effective at giving us what we wanted.

This era empowered the internet user with concepts such as Blogs, Social-Media, Video-Streaming etc. Publishing your own content was only a few clicks! Examples of such innovations are: Twitter, YouTube, Amazon, Flickr, MySpace and Facebook.

Some would argue that such innovations lowered the bar in terms of quality of information. It became more and more difficult to find and truthful information or news that wasn’t biased (or even offensive), was also difficult to avoid. Web 2.0 certainly appeared to be a direct response to web users demanding more involvement in the provision and consumption of the increasing amount information that was becoming available to them. However, some of use were concerned…. ‘be careful what you wish for!’

As we near the end of the Web 2.0 era, we have large mega-tech companies that control our information and profile data and force feed us advertising that they think will encourage us to buy from their clients; News and media information isn’t always believable and large corporations and government departments are better able to track our activities with impunity.

Although we are able to write to the Web, it seems we are doing so to the benefit of others rather than ourselves. The ownership of the information we upload is also concerning. Is it yours, or is your information now the property of the company or service you uploaded it to – for thrir benefit and profit? Things started to get to ludicrous extremes when we stated hearing stories such as the time when a guy reported that he’d started getting parenting advertisements on his phone even before his girlfriend told him she was pregnant!

The excitement from the pioneering days of Web 1.0 are gone. Some feel that the Web 2.0 has ruined it for them – although they clearly have unprecedented access to all forms of new information (and technology). I feel (as a grey haired dude who experienced the fun of Web 1.0) that Web 2.0 has had a more negative influence. It’s a very unfair sentiment though. I tend to take for granted all the good that has come about because of Web 2.0. i.e. access to almost any information I want. To put that in perspective, when I was a child I had to travel to the central library in the city-centre to use a reference book (a book that can’t be taken out of a library) called an Ephemeris. It’s used to help amateur astronomers with coordinated to find planets in the solar system. Such information now takes a minute or two to access on my mobile phone.

There is an excellent article on What Web 2.0 is all about (by the Software Development Community) in their Medium webpage (how fitting!)

Web 3.0 – The semantic web

Or …. something else!? People have been talking about Web 3 for quite a while (not in any cirlcles that we normally frequent however). It was discussed in terms of how the gap between human interaction and computer applications would be better filled. How could we talk to computers more efficiently so that they could better provide us with the things we needed.

That’s all very esoteric. Some considered that the Internet of Things (IoT) is part of Web 3.0. If we have all our devices talking to each other to preempt our need for something before it happens, that would be good right? Meh, maybe – its difficult to consider an application that doesn’t involve some corporation (like CyberDyne) designing a robot that takes over the world.

Is this the new face of Web 3.0?

Naaah, I’d bet that wont happen…. honest! :p

There is a lot of talk about Semantic Web development and that this maybe the new face of the World Wide Web! Semantic Web is when for instance, you search for ‘Jaguar’ and it returns the specific information about ‘Jaguar’ that you wanted: I.e. it shows web page links to the car and not the big cat. How does it know that you wanted to know about Jaguar cars? Simple, it used AI and a whole load of other metrics about you to help itself understand what you actually wanted.

The Web 3.0 version of the Semantic Web is a way off yet, it’s much more likely that the ‘Web 3.0’ currently being banded about the internet at the moment is referring to the cool stuff that is happening on the blockchain and how privacy and decentralisation can benefit us over the shenanigan’s that BigTech is using to exploit us in Web 2.0.

Imagine if you moved your account from Spotify to Amazon Music? In Web 3.0, you could easily transfer all your playlists and preferences too because you own your data and can use it however you want. Crypto is a great example of Web 3.0, you own your money AND the wallet that contains it! Nobody can get hold of your crypto if you are the custodian of your fortune!

This sounds pretty good but it also comes with a lot of responsibility and Web 4.0 and 5.0 may be rapidly developed because of the shortfalls of Web 2.0 and 3.0.

Web 4.0 – AI Interfaces

Personally, I can’t work out if Web 4.0 is a good or a bad idea, It’s the perfect symbiotic relationship with all our devices to help us access information in the way we want it. The idea that we shove a jack-plug into the back our our heads to connect to the matrix is not wholly inaccurate as a description to what many believe that Web 4.0 will look like. Personally, I think it will be less invasive – but not much!

Machines that surrounds us will be able to interact with us on a much more personal level. It isn’t so much about the internet of things, it’s more about how those things communicate with us intuitively. Having to go through a complicated login process to access information or perform some task will be dealt with by Web 4.0. It will be AI centric and concentrate on the development of electromechanical and firmware technologies….. maybe – I honestly don’t know!

To be honest, Web 4.0 hasn’t really, truly, been defined yet. There isn’t much hype about the Internet of Things and that leads me to believe that Web 4.0 will concentrate on this technology rather than blockchain and personal data privacy.

Web 5.0 – The Emotional Web

Web 5.0 is only in the news because Jack Dorsey (co-developer of Twitter) has been talking about it. He believes that the Web will eventually (and by that I mean in our lifetime) be able to communicate on an emotional level using privacy centric technology. He believes that although the blockchain is capable of helping people use and manage their own data without interference, the projects that are at the forefront of this technology are managed by Venture Capitalists and corporations with underlying vested interests that are not properly aligned to personal privacy. We will access information based on the emotion of our communication.

I’m still not sure if this is primarily used to identify who we are or what we want based on how we are feeling but at this level of interaction, it’s believed that facial and body recognition and the way we walk, talk and move will help indicate what we are feeling. There may also be an element of brainwave interpretation etc.

This symbiotic interaction with the Web will actually execute commands rather than simply helping us to find information.

Image going into a barber/hairdresser and the ‘robotic scissors’ walk up to you and politely enquire,

“Same again sir/madam?” (the robot is able to access information on all your previous visits – NOT from it’s own databanks!)

You answer “Yes.”

The robot continues, “Erm. by the way, I notice you have changed your shampoo (it instantly managed to check your recent purchases from the supermarket – NOT from it’s own database), this is causing a slight rash on the back of your neck. I’ve sent a message to your online doctor explaining the situation and it will recommend a suitable treatment for you. (It sent and anonymous tag to an online practitioner that can only be accessed by the your data node. Fundamentally, no personal information was transmitted).

You consider changing your shampoo as you settle into the chair. The robot asks,

“Would you like me to put on some music from your playlist to suit your mood while I cut your hair?” (The robot can read and understand you facial expressions, body language and previous preferences from similar emotions to determine the mood you are in – again, this information is only available from personal face to face communication and access to you personal data node on the blockchain.

Jacks vision is that all this will happen via Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAO’s) that provide technology to manage and perform tasks but allow the user to keep (and carry around) all his/her information within his/her own ‘node’ on the blockchain.

The shop or the hairdressing robot don’t have or keep any information about the user, information is accessed by robotic entities as needed. Access is under strict controls/smart contracts managed by DAO’s. Admittedly, it’s difficult to see how this is going to happen any time soon. I have some ideas, but this would involve companies like Google and Amazon becoming DAO’s! Crazy huh?!

And yet, some of us believe that Web 5.0 will happen before Web 4.0 because so many people are mistrustful of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. and the hardware tech is still a ways off for Web 4.0….

Complicated much!? 🙂

Exciting times!

The opinion piece is written, by Tony Fawl of CryptoAware.org.uk.

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