This post is the third that explores Web 3.0, this new Internet space. It shares the analyzes and vision of GreenSI on the current media and strategic turmoil around this subject.
Previous posts have shown that Web 3.0 was ultimately a concept, exploiting a few founding technologies (VR, blockchain, NFT, … integrated into the global Internet network). A concept sometimes called “Metavers” which some companies had recently seized, with billions of investments, to establish their presence in the Internet of tomorrow, more than to bring a new mission to the global web.
But this iteration three of the evolution of the Web, one of the major components of the Internet, was not always this one.
We started talking about web 3.0 in 2006, in an article by Jeffrey Zeldman on his blog.
Then with Tim Berners Leethe creator of the World Wide Web, which, let us remember, is the hypertext system using the http protocol (hypertext transfer protocol), allowing pages to be visited on the Internet network.
Until 2010, at the infrastructure level, it was a matter of bringing together three networks, or three worlds of the Internet: the Internet from a fixed PC, and that from a mobile terminal or from connected objects. In a way, the virtual world of the Internet met the real world, where people moved around with a terminal in their hand, and where physical places or objects were associated with URLs. We were still far from PokemonGo (2016) and the Metaverse. But let’s not forget that the bandwidth of the networks and the performance of the terminals would not have allowed it.
At the web level, it aimed to organize its mass of information, especially according to context, in an attempt to make more sense of the data. We are talking about the Semantic Web. If you are looking for “a saucepan”, depending on whether you want to cook or play music, the meaning changes and even the positive or negative connotation of the instrument. Today, this idea of personalized search and understanding of the user’s context has disappeared from the radar, to the great regret of a still active semantic web community. Perhaps because the cookies have (poorly) simulated it, by intrusion into personal data and without the consent of the users.
Tim Berners-Leeinterviewed earlier this year at the Fujitus ActivateNow conference on the state of the web, replied thathe did not believe in the potential of Web 3.0 to avoid centralization of the Internet. He also wondered about the usefulness of the current concept, to pursue its initial mission, which was to be accessible and useful to everyone and everything. His answer is clear, it is useless!
In the developments he calls for, there is of course the resumption of control of their digital data by users. He had already been able to say so in 2018 in a forum for the 29th anniversary of the Web, and proposed to tackle their storage in silos on the private platforms of the Internet giants.
It is a decentralization of data that should characterize Web 3.0but to think that the blockchain, integrated into the architecture of the Web, will solve the problem, there is a huge step that it does not cross.
We understood that Tim Berners-Lee was distancing himself from the current Web 3.0. His opponents, however, accuse him of having sold an NFT with the original code of the Web, and thus given credit to this current vision.
For the evolution of the Web, he nevertheless offers a different vision, which he pushes with society Interrupt which he founded. Interrupt, which suggests “Internet Rupture”, develops the open source decentralized web project Solid which wants to prevent the use of our data for unsolicited purposes. It also makes it possible to offer possibilities for sharing our information, for example for research or citizen projects. The father of the Web still believes that his terrible child who has become an adult can return to his original mission…
Another recent indirect position that has caught the attention of GreenSI is that of a group of influential people in the White House. The “Council on Foreign Relations“, a nonprofit, nonpartisan consultancy that analyzes US foreign policy, released a report two weeks ago.
Their demonstration is that America’s decades-old ambition to foster a global, open, secure, and interoperable Internet has not materialized. As presented in the first post, cyberspace is more fragmented, less free and more dangerous.
The conclusion they draw is that the United States is losing the race for cyberspace!
They point the blame to the vision of an Internet built on traditional American values, such as global openness, at the expense of national privacy laws. It has allowed adversaries of the Internet to exploit this weakness, and easily deploy their power and influence in this digital world. A pragmatic demonstration which recognizes that the absence of regulation cannot be regulation. In a way, they agree with Europe.
This council believes the fragmentation of the internet will continue as governments of all types seek data sovereignty. Moreover, it will not always be in the interest of the Internet user, as advocated Tim Berners-Leebut more for its surveillance, as we see it being deployed in China.
In particular, they call on the White House to intervene internationally to join the United States in a coalition to develop international rules governing how the public and private sectors collect, use, protect, store and share data.
In this context, a vision of the Metaverse “à la Mark Zuckerger”, which will collect data even more precise than the clicks of a mouse, on the emotions of the visitors of its Horizon World, with immersive equipment like helmets, seems complex to deploy.
Web 3.0 is therefore an orphan of its creator, but also of the world power that most helped to develop it. It will therefore not be a new version of the Internet accessible to all. Monitoring usage in each part of the Internet will therefore be important for companies to decide whether or not to participate and how.
In 2030, as Mark Zuckerberg thinks, will there be a billion people in the Metaverse? And to do what?
This is what we will cover in the next post, compiling the studies of all the analysts and understanding their assumptions.
A Gartner analyst, for example, predicts that 25% of individuals will spend at least one hour a day in the Metaverse by 2026, combining professional, leisure, educational or social uses. And the corollary is that by that same date, 30% of organizations worldwide will have Metaverse-ready products and services.
This seems very ambitious for the next 4 years, with companies preparing for a global recession, but we will dig into the figures together and compare them to the development of Internet 1.0, quite simply. You understand, it is finally a question of speed of adoption, for each use, which will make the difference.
Nor is it certain that users want so much to assume the responsibility that Web 3.0 gives them with their personal data, when we see the lightness with which they have separated from it in Web 2.0. It only remains for me to wish you a good holiday. See you in the fall.
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