The Advent of Web 5.0
The Internet is the Internet, or is it? Anyone who has been online since 1990 has seen the Internet grow, change, and become more engaging over the last three decades. But did you know those changes represent distinct periods of growth and are designated with a number to distinguish them?
From Web 1.0 to Web 5.0, the web has and continues to evolve. To understand the changes here’s a brief evolution of the Web:
Web 1.0 (1990-2000) Read Only Web
Web 1.0 was the first stage of the World Wide Web. It was mainly read-only and was very static. Users could look at the articles and photos, but that was about it. It was like an electronic magazine. People read websites and their contents just like they’d read a magazine — only on a computer screen. Readers couldn’t interact with, comment on, or do much else with what they read, so once you got used to the ease of finding information, it wasn’t that exciting. No one, except those who understood how to decipher computer code, knew what they’d read when looking at the code behind the websites. This was Web 1.0 and it was known as “The Information” or “Read Only Web.”
Web 1.0 was essentially an electronic phone book. You could look things up, and sometimes you’d find articles or information about the company, but mostly you’d see what was a colorful ad about a company or product, and its store hours, location, and contact information. By the year 2000, we had moved from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. If Web 1.0 was the Read Only Web, then, to be honest, Web 2.0 didn’t do much more.
Web 2.0 (2000-2010) – Read and Write Web
Think about websites, blogs, and social media with comment sections. It’s easy to imagine today, but it wasn’t in 2000. By 2000 we were both relieved the world and the Internet hadn’t ended with the Y2K bug, but we now could express our relief on various websites that it hadn’t.
With Web 2.0, we could not only see articles, photos, products, and other information, but we could also comment on them. Web 2.0 was stage two of the World Wide Web. It wouldn’t pass as “The Social web” now, but it did then. It was the best of times and the worst of times. Not only was 2000 the birth of Web 2.0, but of trolls, and online bullying. True, the ability to comment led to an explosion in the bad, but more importantly, it led to positive networking potential, and to the first steps of engaging with consumers, clients, and customers. Internet users could not only see and read their favorite websites but they could interact and connect with other users also on those sites. Companies could find out organically how their customers felt and thought about their companies. Social media, things like Blogs, Facebook, and YouTube also emerged in Web 2.0. And, Jeff Bezos got a glimmer in his eye about a company he could start and sell more books than anyone else from. Amazon, and sites like it, we’re about to be born.
People got excited. For the early adopters, collaboration, online communities of buyers, sellers, and consumers were now a possibility. Some companies, although not many, began to see how having buyers interact with their business websites could be a good thing. Most people still just thought of the Internet as a bigger, fancier, cheaper, more exciting ad page. It was difficult to get late adopters to see Web 2.0 as having any potential. However, while the majority of users were still struggling with the concept of interactivity, there were millions of users who were beginning to look ahead to Web 3.0 and even greater potential.
Web 3.0 (2010-2020) – The Semantic Web
Web 3.0 can be challenging to explain or understand unless you understand, coding, data, and a bit of nerd speak. However, to those of us who don’t speak programming, let’s just say Web 3.0 is an Internet (or World Wide Web) in which the data on web pages was structured and tagged in such a way that it could be read directly by computers. The most important thing to know about Web 3.0 is it was/is the first step in artificial intelligence (AI) for computers. If you’re not familiar with AI, it’s the ability of machines to essentially think and act for themselves.
By 2010, when Web 3.0 arrived, you could almost hear the hum of the Internet, or maybe what you were hearing was the hiss and clack of Darth Vader’s ventilator going off as people began to both love and embrace, and fear and loathe the advances they were seeing. What was happening to the Internet was both amazingly beautiful, and downright terrifying to those who understood what was happening in front of their eyes. AI was real — stumbling and awkward and broken, but alive and beginning to develop the potential to do more than anyone dreamed possible.
Web 3.0 was first described in 2006, still five years from its official arrival, as “an Internet that defined organized or structured data to simplify automation, integration, and discovery across multiple applications.” You could not only read, write, comment, and interact with other Internet users, you could collect information about them to create data sets that would allow you to analyze the user and their machine. Whereas your old Popular Science Magazine used to be exciting the minute you opened the pages, now you could search on projects, history, science and technology news and more. And you could target other reader’s preferences to sell those searches to them, even if they hadn’t consented, and even if they didn’t want you using their Internet history to do so.
Web 3.0 became known as “The Semantic Web” — semantic meaning it tried to represent knowledge (any knowledge in any field, about anything) in a way that allowed computers to automatically reach a conclusion, a decision, or an analytic business decision using some reasoning or data. Web 3.0 became an extension that focused on the intelligent connection and relationship between people and machines.
AI can take a computer user’s Google search history, whether it is recipes, bomb-making, tools, literature, or yes — porn, and make personalized suggestions for the user’s web search results, or potential ad choices. Do you like baking and cooking? Expect to see more ads for cookware and cookbooks based on what websites you visit. Are you a DIY’er? Expect to get the “How-to” ads your neighbor the audiophile doesn’t see. We love it or hate it. It creeps us out, but it also helps us find things we’d never otherwise see, related to our passions. We may be frogs boiling in a pot we’re blissfully unaware of, or we may be loving the frictionless environment Web 3.0 has created.
Web 4.0 (2020-2030) The Growth of IoT (The Internet of Things)
Web 3.0 is coming to a close in 2020. It will, my Internet nerd friends tell me, evolve into Web 4.0. Then, unlike the slow, decades-long progression from Web 3.0 to 4.0, we’ll suddenly be looking at Web 5.0. In movie parlance, the quote would be something along the lines of “We’re going to need a bigger boat (Jaws),” to “Things just got real.”
While Covid-19, or the Coronavirus, or the pandemic has distracted us for the past months, Web 4.0 has steadily grown, preparing the Internet, and the world, for Web 5.0.
Growth of IoT or Internet of Things
In a phrase, the Internet of Things (Iot) means everything in your life, and I mean everything, will talk to each other about you, in front of you, behind your back, and without much concern or compassion, but with every focus on selling, buying, and controlling you. It was cute to have a kitty cat shaped robot waking you up in the morning, but Web 5.0 will go beyond that. It will be connected to your job, and telling your boss whether you’re up and moving, or just hit the snooze button. Web 5.0, for all the advantages it offers, will connect you with the Internet in ways you wanted, and didn’t want, to be connected. How fast are you driving? Where did you stop on the way to work? Who are you with? What are you doing? How much did you spend and on what?
IoT means the interconnection between all of the devices and the internet so that they can send and receive data. What data and where they send it and for what end, is up to those controlling it. The ads you’ll see will show you turning on your heat as you drive home in a snowstorm. You’ll be saving money! You’ll be saving energy! You’ll be creating a history anyone can examine for the rest of your life.
Web 4.0, Web 5.0, and Artificial Intelligence (2020-2030 and beyond)
AI, which comes with Web 4.0 and definitely with Web 5.0, will allow your computers (yes, the computers in your toaster, alarm clock, phone, fridge, house, and car, to communicate, think, reason, respond and behave in response to your emotional or neurological state — just like another human being — or close to it.
Web 4.0 and Web 5.0. Web 4.0 or the intelligent web will hover at the level of human intelligence and act as an independent human brain. Computers will turn into personal assistants using virtual realities. All house appliances will be connected to the internet using IoT with chip implants in human brains, it looks like highly intelligent interactions will take place between machines and humans. If you can “think it” you can make it happen, which is what the ads and propaganda for Web 4.0 will tell us.
Web 5.0 or “the telepathic and emotive web” will come after the year 2030. Hold on. This web will involve brain implants or at least a headset, that will allow the Internet to understand and respond to your feelings, to your emotional states. Emoji’s will be a very old school. Did you think Mark Zuckerberg really created his iconic icons so we could communicate better? No. AI is The web will be able to sense, record, and communicate the full complexity of human thought and emotion. Can you say, “Hive mind.”?
Why talk to your spouse when you can think to them instead? People will have the power and ability to communicate with the internet, their homes, their cars, their kids, their jobs etc. through their thoughts and feelings. No one will need joysticks or game consoles. Just relax and think your way through a computer game. Think of a question, product, or service you need or want and the web pages (and ads) with the information will open. Microchips in your brain or hand will connect your wallet, medical charts, job and job history, payment history, bills, and every facet of life to the Internet. Every device in your life, and millions outside your life, will be controlled by your environment, and the app developers.
Going shopping? Think about what you need, reflect back on what’s in your refrigerator and you’ll know exactly what you need — well, Web 5.0 will. It will also know what it costs, the best deals, and can checkout and pay for everything with a thought, or maybe two.
It’s not here yet, but we can see it from here.
Special thanks to Becky Blanton, co-author of this article, TED Speaker, and part of our Networlding team of book-creation experts.