Web 3.0, the World We Should Live In

A month has passed since 2022, but today is still yesterday’s day. New days are piling up, but it is getting awkward to go outside the house, and the door through the world is narrowing. And sometimes, I feel the fear of suddenly rushing in after losing my tired body on a night train running through an unfamiliar foreign land. Where am I? Where am I going? And where should I get off?

I wonder how the world is changing now. If we take Nietzsche’s rhetoric, which emphasized the present, to look at the past flows that have created the present and expect trends that will occur in the future, wouldn’t the present moment be a little clear?

Let’s look back on the past 30 years. If we look for the driving force that has dramatically changed our daily lives, we cannot help but cite the development of information technology, that is, the Internet.

When we first encountered the popularized Internet(Web 1.0, 1991–2004) created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, we could directly access overseas news on websites such as the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. We were no longer alone and connected to the world.

And ten years later, with the rapid growth of Internet-based businesses and web technology development, we experienced so-called dot-com bubbles. Web 2.0, however, a concept created by classifying and analyzing surviving and emerging companies, opened a new era from 2005. Through Twitter, we create and share our own stories within 140 characters, summon forgotten people on Facebook and contact new people to participate in “Like,” obtain much knowledge in the areas of interest uploaded on YouTube, and meet collective intelligence to share specific interests.

Meanwhile, in 2022, a new Internet era called Web 3.0 is rapidly approaching. Web 3.0 is evolving into an ongoing concept (concept raised in 1999, terminology uprooted in 2006, and technology implemented in 2009), but it shows different characteristics from Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.

First of all, from the perspective of information flows through the Internet, Web 1.0 focuses on reading information by accessing news, bulletin boards, and e-mails based on PCs. On the other hand, web 2.0 is when information writing is active while creating and sharing content such as tweets, blogs, and wiki. Meanwhile, Web 3.0 can be said to be a time when you read and write information on all devices without distinction between PCs or smartphones and own your content, such as MyData, NFT, and Domain Accounts (i.e., Ethereum Name Service).

In particular, on Web 3.0, computer networks shall be decentralized, and data processing and storage are becoming more decentralized. Amid the blurring of the boundaries between the virtual world and the real world, mechanical connections, reading, and writing using artificial intelligence have increased the connection between objects and objects in the past. In other words, various financial, medical, and administrative services will rapidly change to artificial intelligence-based services. In some services, users as humans will also be replaced by robots.

The Internet world’s main character was a company on Web 1.0, while a community on Web 2.0 will be microscopically differentiated into individuals on Web 3.0. Third-party brokers may be excluded, and P2P(peer-to-peer) transactions may increase. As individuals become more anonymous and protected, their presence will stand out, but the responsibility to bear on their own will also increase. At least if you consider the base technology of Web 3.0, it is highly likely.

The future world is still today, at least if you don’t give up now and don’t give up on me. Now you don’t snoop around the window to find out what’s going on in the world. Instead, you can lower your head and look into the cell phone screen in your hand.