At DAV we like to think of ourselves as part of a global community of technologists building what is called the decentralized web — or Web 3.0.
You may have heard the term before, but what exactly is Web 3.0? We are going to give you a quick and clear explanation of Web 3.0, but in order to understand it, we need to first talk a bit about the evolution of the Internet.
Web 1.0 was the first generation of the World Wide Web that started in the early nineties, it was based on the technology of HTTP which worked to link documents on different computers and make them accessible over the Internet. HTML was then used to display those documents so that any connected computer with a browser could access and read a web page. Web 1.0 was all about information as it enabled us to exchange information much more efficiently; and hence it got the name “information superhighway.” Even though it was a revolution in information exchange, content creators were few and far between, with the vast majority of users simply acting as consumers of content. It was a very static and non-interactive Web.
Whereas in the Web 1.0-era people were limited to the passive viewing of content, Web 2.0 websites allowed users to interact, collaborate and become the creators of content. Web 2.0 is best characterized as the read-write Web. People could not only read from the Web but also write to it. By the early 2000s, new server-side scripting technologies, enabled developers to easily build applications where people could write information to a database with that information then being dynamically updated every time they refreshed the page. Almost all of the websites that we know are based on this basic technology… it gave us blogging, social networking, video sharing, eBay, Youtube, Facebook and all the large platforms that dominate the web today.
The idea of Web 3.0 has been around for a while but it is only in the last year or two, with the rise of the blockchain, that it has actually started to become a reality. Just as the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 was a fundamental restructuring of the way the Internet works, likewise Web 3.0 is not just a new technology, but a reconfiguration of the very structure of the Internet and what it can do.
Web 2.0 has evolved to become highly centralized around very large platforms running out of ever-larger data centers, creating many issues such as security, privacy, and control and concentration of power in the hands of large enterprises. Web 3.0 is set to disrupt this technology paradigm. It is a critical change to how the Web is formed and looks to completely decentralize the web.
The blockchain provides the protocols and cryptography for a globally distributed network of computers to collaborate on maintaining a publicly secure database, and with a virtual machine like Ethereum, we can run code on this creating a new set of distributed applications.
The big idea here is that these new technologies of the blockchain, IPFS, and the distributed web, enable us to reconfigure the internet into a distributed global computer, so that we are no longer dependent upon the web platforms and data centers of Web 2.0 to run the Internet but can now build and run applications on this shared global computer.
The implications of the decentralized Web are indeed radical in that it enables us to create automated services, remove existing incumbents, and enable people to set up their own secure networks of exchange empowering them in new ways.
The blockchain will be the backbone of Web 3.0 but the next generation internet will also see the convergence of the Internet of Things and smart systems. Whereas Web 1.0 and 2.0 were largely about people exchanging information, in Web 3.0 machines will come online and the Internet will become something more physical as billions of devices and actuators connect it to all sorts of things — from tractors to factories to drones — enabling them to interact and coordinate, machine-to-machine.
Likewise, the next generation Internet will be much smarter. Whereas Web 1.0 was dumb and Web 2.0 was dynamic, Web 3.0 will incorporate machine learning and cognitive computing as-a-service as it becomes infused into almost all applications making it truly adaptive and personalized.
With developers around the world feverishly building the blockchain infrastructure and applications, the move towards Web 3.0 is well underway and will likely happen fast in the coming years.
As the decentralized Web for transportation, we see the DAV Network as one critical piece in this big jigsaw puzzle that is revolutionizing our world.
