The Worldwide Web Evolution
Web 1.0 Communication
Experts call the Internet before 1999 “Read-Only” web. The average internet user’s role was limited to reading the information which was presented to him. The best examples of this 1.0 web era are millions of static websites which mushroomed during the dot-com boom (which eventually has led to the dotcom bubble). There was no active communication or information flow from consumer (of the information) to producer (of the information). But the information age was born!
According to Tim Berners-Lee the first implementation of the web, representing the Web 1.0, could be considered as the “read-only web.” In other words, the early web allowed users to search for information and read it. There was very little in the way of user interaction or content contribution. […]
During the web 1.0 era, the only business sector that feel the start of creative disruption trend was the printed media. Ironically is when the dot bubble pop that the revenue for media printed publisher start crashing, see chart.
Web 2.0 Social
The social web evolution goes from user of web content to participant of the same web content dynamically interacting with relational object database. The creative destruction is accelerating with more traditional business feeling the pain from e-commerce, music, video store (see chart) , our kids will not even know what was a video store, sad.
The social Web consists of a number of online tools and platforms where people share their perspectives, opinions, thoughts and experiences. Web 2.0 applications tend to interact much more with the end user. As such, the end user is not only a user of the application but also a participant by product. What Is Web 2.0 by Tim O’Reilly give a really good resume of the state of affair.
Web 3.0 Sharing Economy (semantic web)
Inside this web iteration we see the emergence of the mobile web and new peer 2 peer business model that came as full stack platform based on the cloud (Software as a Service),(Platform as a Service),(Infrastructure as a Service),(Everything as a Service). The drastic cost drop for starting a software business is mainly what differ the web 2.0 with web 3.0. AI is thriving on open source platform not just inside Wall Street firm, the rise of the algorithm that use metadata to extrapolate user preference is more dominant than ever.
This time the classical brick and mortar retail store start to really feel the pain from giant like Amazone. This time is not just the retail sector but the service sector too are being disrupted by new p2p business like Uber, AirBnb, LendingClub,etc…At the same time business on demand economy seem exploitative of the precarity of worker because they cannot build equity as like a normal independent contractor do.
Web 4.0 Value Web, Internet of Value, Cryptoconomy (Web OS)
The value web *cryptoconomy* represent a huge paradigm shift for society because it will be the first time in history of the web that the massive monetary deflation will create richness for user with really low barrier for entry and reshape our economy at the management level. The difference with the web 3.0 is the participant just produce work on the front end they don’t participate to the back end, now with the use of blockchain and distributed ledger that possibility is now a reality. The new stack that would leverage the *Web OS* could be see as (blockchain, virtual machine, distributed ledger technology and smart gateway).
Is the beginning of a new era, Bitcoin lead the space acting as a great store of value for crypto enthusiasm, (digital gold). After we did have the distributed ledger moment with Hyper Ledger and Ripple that provide a set application particularly useful for financial market, later we have R3 and Digital Asset entering that space . Ethereum with smart contract (turing complete) capability and the new multiservice tokenization economy for storage, computation, crowdfunding etc… The architecture is not well defined yet, Microsoft start the Blockchain as a Service movement to protect their turf, IBM on the other hand start to do the promotion of blockchain + AI = 2 buzzword which is great for marketing, is yet to see what will emerge from those initiative. Now with Enterprise Ethereum Alliance we could expect some breakthrough for private chain implementation and broader blockchain adoption.We see lately the birth of multi purpose consortium that work on open source like Hyperledger that is really interesting and other consortium more specific like iB3 for the insurance industry.
