🌐What is the Web?
The Internet, a product of the 70s and the rapid development of information technologies, was still in its infancy when the concept of the Web emerged. In 1989, a pivotal moment in the history of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee and his team at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) created a distributed hypertext system on the computer network. This system, designed to facilitate information sharing among collaborators, was the birth of the World Wide Web (WWW), or simply the Web, as we know it today. The web has had many evolutions since its birth. Evolution is often related to technological breakthroughs related to technology itself. However, the Web is, before everything else, an evolution of managing and transferring information in humanity.
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The globalization of information transfer in digital form, whereas it was previously mainly analog or physical. This marked the beginning of the Internet.
The advent of the “social” web. Individuals can interact through the web to perform everyday actions. Exchange communities often represent the “social” web, called “social networks,” managed by giant centralized entities like Google or Amazon. Telecommuting and online shopping are also part of this social evolution.
It all started with the Bitcoin project. In the wake of the financial crisis, individuals decided to transfer social trust (held by banks) to a blockchain-based network. This marked the beginning of decentralized governance architectures/networks, allowing individuals to completely control their assets and communication data through digital means (algorithmic) rather than human trust.
Web4 recently emerged from the European Commission (EC), which defines It as "a blend between artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, blockchain, virtual worlds, and extended reality capabilities." This concept, rather innovative but without consensus, requires the maturity of the previous Web2 and Web3 phases, which are still ongoing and demand new solutions in the market.
The emergence of the Web3 ecosystem opens the door for the next generation of web solutions for users and businesses, leveraging the power of blockchain technologies. Central to this ecosystem is a public, decentralized peer-to-peer network, which builds a low-cost, secure, and efficient infrastructure secured by cryptographic proofs with servers worldwide. Although the Web3 ecosystem is still developing, real-world applications have emerged over recent years. For example, the French Gendarmerie Nationale has utilized the Tezos blockchain for financial transactions, Texan Factom uses blockchain to time-stamp transactions in an IoT network, and Walmart uses blockchain for food traceability.
Let's explore the evolution of the web and this revolution, which drives technology and Humanity at the scale of Earth and beyond!
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