Web 3.0?
While many of us in this course were too young to notice the transition from “The Web” to “Web 2.0”, what is being called “Web 3.0” might come and we may not even notice…
or will we?
Knowing the students of this class, we may actually notice Web 3.0 at disproportionally high rates. This is because the expected changes from 2.0 to 3.0 are mostly in back-end technologies. Instead of seeing changes from navigational networks, to navigational functions with transactional functions, expect to see the underlying structures of social medias, payment methods, and hosting services challenged.
With the rise and fall of bitcoin and the scandals of facebook, it is clear that the vast majority of consumers have no clue how to grasp the Web, its powers, and its gaps in its entirety. Outlined in the article The Web 3.0: The Web Transition is Coming is a relevant chart as to potential, and expected, changes to the web. See below!
Some of the changes are already popping up. For example, metrics changing from Cost Per Click to User Engagement is seen in advertising models from platforms such as Spotify or Hulu, where you are given the opportunity to “engage” with a commercial (click through a few screens, rate something, etc.), in lieu of longer commercials. As this engagement is offered as a seemingly more attractive model to the viewer, and given as an incentivized offering from the seller, it is clear this is where metrics are heading.
On the personal side, we have seen the switch from Home Pages to Blogs/Wikis, and closer than ever we are moving to Lifestreams. While blogs, wikis, and homepages are still popular, social media has given outlets for seamless, continual, and unlimited outpouring of personal information as well. Take Instagram for example. On this single platform, you have the opportunity to not only post photos of your life, but within the last 2 years, we were given the ability to post “stories” of our lives – short term videos/photos/boomerangs/etc.. These stories have recently been added with a “highlight” feature. So now you can not only post them temporarily, but you can pin them to your profile in suave, sorted manners permanently. Even further, you can quite literally “go live” and talk to your followers in real time, which is a vast advancement from the original “Home Pages”.
While these predictions are still mainly speculation, they are a good indicator to where the Web might be headed. There are of course, many more ideas, from more widespread AR, to incorporating AI or ML, it will be fascinating to learn ourselves the conceptual mechanisms at work in these networks whilst the networks themselves are being changed and developed.