Hello again today we're going to be looking at the web, I feel like we don't give the web enough respect and we have mobile applications to blame for this, I'm not the first to say this by the way. Jack Dorsey tweeted about it first. I was having a conversation with a non-technical friend about web 1.0, web 2.0 and web 3.0. My litmus test for deciding what to write about is that if I discuss a tech concept with a non-technical person and they have no clue about it, it's probably worth writing about.
A RELATABLE EXPLANATION
A lot of people surf the web and aren't aware of the changes that have occurred over the last couple of decades in the nature and functionality of the web, major upgrades in the web are hard to notice because software engineers (are humble 😏) make it look easy. Web 1.0 was all we had between 1989 to 2005, we had static web pages, the internet was in her relative infancy, it was relatively more expensive to build things (I wrote about IaaS, PaaS and SaaS recently and they drive this home), as such majorly companies had websites.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE WEB
We would browse the web and be in a one-sided communication where people would write things on the internet and we could offer feedback, the best we could do was download things, these were very dark times than gen Z folks may not have survived 😂. Web 2.0 came to breathe a little life into the internet, it provided netizens (before we officially identified as netizens) the ability to interact with the web and not feel like an outsider looking in. Web 2.0's reign however came to an end in 2012.
Web 2.0 is probably what most people think we're still surfing because it gave us major upgrades that paved the way for social media, podcasts, blogging, etc. The internet became dynamic to the point of reacting to your requests to give you a fairly bespoke experience. Web 3.0 is still taking off as many expect more from web 3.0, believe that web 3.0 is still maturing, I believe that web 3.0 will have a longer reign than its predecessors, I don't see it lasting longer than web 1.0. We move too fast these days 😅.
You've seen some of what web 3.0 has to offer (though we expect them to be more stable). Web 3.0 ushers in a better search engine, a lot of people underrate this feature, to understand its importance, you have to answer one simple question. When was the last time you went as far as page 4 in Google's search results? you mostly find what you need on page 1 😁. Other features are artificial intelligence, 3D graphics (found only on some websites), more platform availability (mobile, wearables like smartwatches, etc).
A lot of what web 3.0 has to offer requires 5G internet speed to be a norm, more software engineers and more powerful devices that can support what is to come. Accessing a 3D platform with a 3G network gives the user a poor experience (I've been there 😥). Web 4.0 is already ideologically mapped out (though web 3.0 is far from perfect), it promises human and machine synergy (like cyborgs), better communication with machines as they begin to understand natural language, virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality. Also noteworthy is being able to have the internet as an operating system (in the way we have Windows, IOS and Android 🤯).
FINALLY
We have very interesting times ahead of us which is why I'm amused when people say tech is a bubble, we're just getting started 😂. Things are beginning to shape up as metaverse is more than just a fancy buzzword, implementation is already underway. There's no better time to be alive, and for software engineers, fasten your seatbelts, we're going for a hell of a ride 😎