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Spins A Web, Any Size

We have a lot to thank the internet for. It enables us to be entertained by cat videos, stream endless music and inflict photos of ourselves holding a fish on everyone else using that dating app. The web as it looks today though is a far cry from what it was like a relatively short time ago. It’s still changing, too. Something called Web3 is on the horizon, and it stands to shake up how the internet is structured on the technical side, while offering greater conveniences to the average user. What then do we need to know about this new iteration of the ‘net? It’s the web Jim, but not as we know it.

Way back in the early 90’s, using the web was a very different experience to the one we’ve grown accustomed to now. The (quite beige) computer would take several minutes to fire up, you’d wait an additional minute or so for your dial-up connection to negotiate before finally being able to browse. Loading up a website remember is technically downloading its content and layout to your browser for your enjoyment. With such little bandwidth available, websites back then featured mostly text with as few images as possible, so as to prevent truly painful load times. You’d hop on, grab the information you needed, then disconnect. This is now known as Web 1.0, and was practically the dark ages compared to modernity.

Web 2.0 came along in around 2004 and is the connected and convenient plethora of content which we enjoy today. Mostly fueled by fast, affordable internet connections for consumers, we consider the characteristics of Web 2.0 as interactive and user-driven sites and services. Social media, web streaming platforms and connected apps all fall under this heading. One of my favorite examples of contemporary website design is mobile awareness. We have this technology to thank for sites which dynamically adjust based on the device on which you’re browsing, as history tells us that desktop sites are truly a bear to navigate on a smartphone. Web 2.0 is what almost all of us today colloquially refer to as “The Internet.”

So how could it possible get any better? Enter Web 3.0, or simply Web3. The main focus of Web3 is decentralization and its related technologies. As it stands and speaking very broadly, websites currently are hosted individually on servers. That server lives in a room somewhere, with all of its server friends. If anything happens to that room, that server loses its ability to host that particular website. What’s neat about decentralization is that there’s no single point of failure like this. The website’s information is spread out in chunks across lots of hosts, meaning the loss of one or more sources is inconsequential. It’s great for reliability, and it means no one body controls access to something.

This evolution also brings baked-in features such as blockchain technology to enable more seamless security, information sharing, cryptocurrency payments and more. As we surge toward a more connected future, the internet and the way that we use it has to be able to keep up. Much like the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, Web3 is something which will come about slowly as adoption of these new technologies broadens. If you’ve gotten involved with NFTs at all, you’re already enjoying the infancy of Web3. There’s of course some pushback to this progress, as decentralization does bring about arguments of controlling content, but for me there are more benefits than drawbacks. The third time in this case may well be the charm.

 

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