It’s been quite some time since the birth of the termin web 2.0 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0) in September 2005 (made popular by Tim O’Reilly) was born. But did Web 2.0 change the things it was set to change (to free the world wide web from centralised “moguls” of the old world)?
A lot of things have changed (and to the matter of fact it still is changing things - for example social networks and content perception), as to how most of us use the world wide web, and changed our perception on how we view the internet as a whole.
But, since its arrival more than 10 years ago, it hasn’t managed to grow up properly. Just like with your own kids, it’s not always the mistake of the child when he misbehaves. It’s more of an “upbringing” mistake.
The biggest mistake we made while “upbringing” web 2.0, was build on top of the mistakes that we already had.This is in regards to centralization and in regards to personal data abuse (not to mention a few). Enough to look at those “minor” examples - https://www.observeit.com/blog/importance-data-misuse-prevention-and-detection/.
What did we get? That’s right. We managed to change one “mogul” for another. Web 2.0 is just full of it… of centralization (https://bdtechtalks.com/2017/10/27/why-does-the-centralized-internet-suck/).
Coverage and adoption do not equal success as we can see now. Unfortunately, most people have started to use the current version (web 2.0) of the internet as a means to make political decisions (the recent facebook election scandal, for example), increase corporate centralization (look at the current riches of the world) and so on and so forth. It is by all means - a centralized entity in today’s shape and form.
How do we fix this and how do we succeed in it?
Well, this is a question for a completely separate story, but in short, just look at the story of Linux and its development since its “birth”. Has its seen real mass adoption? Not in terms of the success of such centralised instruments as facebook or instagram, it hasn’t. Is it successful? I would argue that - “yes, it is”. Most of us (if not all), use it every day without even knowing about it. Cars, fridges, light switches… you name it.
Can web 3.0 be the change we were waiting for? Web 3.0 doesn’t require trust (and I am referring to the problem solved by the bitcoin white paper n 2008). Web 3.0 is being built on top of decentralized postulates. Fairer postulates. Postulates, that are more suited for tomorrow’s world and for our personal freedom.
Unlike web 2.0, the “third” version is helping to spread resources across beings (and I’m saying beings rather than just “human beings” on purpose, AI and robotics included) in a much fairer way.
Unlike web 2.0, “version” 3.0 is made to route transactions, rather than to force them. And its mass adoption and success is nearer than we can imagine. Right as we speak, infrastructure is already being built and developed (enough to check the white papers of some top crypto projects). And anyone can (and should) become a part of the “new web” and help to get rid of the moguls.