Evolution of the World Wide Web (Time before the Metaverse)

With talk of the virtual world it is important for us to understand the history and evolution of the web in order to understand where we are going. How did we even get here? What came before this? Where are we now? The internet initially started about 30 years ago as a way for the government to share text files filled information. The internet was born January 1st, 1983. Around that time is when Internet protocol was invented so that computers could communicate with each other.

Web 1.0 (mostly Read-Only)

Web 1.0 is the earliest version of the web. It was the time when html text files were being shared from one address to another. In a way it was very similar to writing a letter and mailing it to a friend or loved one. Except this way is much faster, if you wanted to share a piece of information, sending it via IP address was much quicker. However, the setback to web 1.0 is that not everyone had access to the web yet. The web for a select group of people or “content creators”. Web 1.0 was only html text files, with maybe some css styling. Purposes of web 1.0 mainly were used for personal websites and or websites with directories to give the user the ability to retrieve information. Web 1.0 had static web pages. Static web pages are delivered by html that does not change. The web page has fixed html code that will not and cannot be changed while being shared online. At this point in the web there is no option for the user to change or communicate with anything on the website.

Web 2.0 (Read and write)

Web 2.0 came with a much more robust upgrade. Web 2.0 had html, css, and what is now called JavaScript and Ajax requests. The website differs from web 1.0 in that web pages are dynamic, meaning they are able to handle users requests on the site. The web pages not only host the information on the site but are able to have users interact with the information given. For example when facebook was first created it was built off of a basic CRUD (create, read, update, delete) application. Users were able to create, read, update, and delete. On facebook a user can comment on someone’s post and delete it if they changed their mind, web 1.0 did not have that ability. Web 2.0 is the world of social media, blogging, content voting, tagging, etc. Web 2.0 has developed API’s in order to have information stored and flow easily through.

Web 3.0 (portable and personal)

Web 3.0 is the era of smart applications. Smart TV’s, bluetooth sharing, Artificial Intelligence and so on. The sophistication of this next generation technology is machine learning and artificial intelligence. The goal is to create intelligent websites and applications that have more automation. The idea for machine learning is to memorize and learn the behavior of data. An example of this is Spotify’s music algorithm, which can learn the user’s music interests by collecting all the data stored from each play and bases its predicaments of learning the behavior of the data. Unlike web 1.0 and 2.0 where we had the user’s reading and interacting with data. Web 3.0 is about how both the user and machine interacts and behaves with data.