Why the Metaverse is Web 4.0
Evolution of the Internet: Web 1.0 to Web 4.0
by Timothy Coleman - 22/Mar/2022
Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 – A Brief History
As a Web developer of 10 years, I’ll admit, even I had to look up the exact difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, but this should explain it: “Web 2.0 began to differentiate itself from Web 1.0, when technology developed to the point that users were able to dynamically interact with content, as opposed to simply being passive consumers of websites: eBay vs https://sec.money”.
Ok, so purists might want to debate whether a front-end-only React Website is technically Web 1.0 or Web 2.0, and whether or not some sites can include components of Web 1.0 AND of Web 2.0, but this article is meant to be about the Metaverse, so lets argue in the comments below (or in VRChat if you want to do it in the Metaverse).
Either way, the internet changed, and is changing, and has moved from purely a place for static information, to something we have the power to shape ourselves, and is now moving towards a space more similar to a video game that we can choose to ‘step into’ in a highly immersive way (or continue to interact with in our browsers). Who knows where it will end up: The Matrix?
Web 3.0 – It’s Complicated..
There seems to be considerable debate between the traditional Web community and the blockchain/decentralised community, over the definition of Web 3.0. The newer community using Web 3.0 to refer to their entire movement, but the traditional Web community going with a definition which was given (along with a definition of Web 4.0), long before the popularity of Bitcoin.
Tim Berners Lee, who coined the term Web 2.0, also came up with a definition of Web 3.0 which he called the ‘Semantic Web’: this was envisioned (according to Wikipedia), to be “An extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).. [in order to] make Internet data machine-readable”. Quite the opposite of the user-led space envisioned by those in Blockchain.
What is important to note, is that it doesn’t necessarily matter what Web 3.0 is when defining Web 4.0, as the ‘Metaverse’ can exist whether Web 3.0 is agreed to be the Semantic Web or the Decentralised Web. What matters more, is how much the Metaverse will be centralised vs decentralised. A bit later we will look at what this means from an ownership POV (decentralised computation is another area entirely).
Web 4.0 - The Symbiotic Web/The Metaverse
‘The Metaverse’ is not a new idea and many talk about Second Life (released back in 2003) as having been the original Metaverse. The prediction of a ‘Symbiotic Web’ where humans and machines are more closely linked, has been around for a very long time, and VR headset developments show that we are moving more in this direction (see: development of eye tracking hardware).
“Web 4.0 services will be autonomous, proactive, content-exploring, self-learning, collaborative, and content-generating agents based on fully matured semantic and reasoning technologies as well as AI… Examples might be services interacting with sensors and implants, natural-language services, or virtual reality services.” - What is Web 4.0
I’m not really proposing anything new here, I just don’t think many people have necessarily made the connection that <revision: ‘The Metaverse’ is a category of Web 4.0> imagined over a decade ago! How it will continue to develop is yet to be seen, but we already see the development of technology with which we can interact, based purely on brain activity.
Conclusion – Metaverse/s and Decentralisation
There has been considerable debate in the emerging tech space about whether or not we should talk about ‘Metaverses’ or ‘The Metaverse’. The term ‘Metaverse’ should be first considered from a non-technical standpoint. One can’t talk about ‘The Metaverse’, or even ‘The Internet’ if thinking in terms of technical architecture, but we can when talking about how we use it.
We use the internet without understanding TCP/IP protocols, it will eventually be the same with the Metaverse. We could even use the term ‘Metaspaces’ to refer to separate places (e.g. Facebook’s Metaspace vs VRChat) which operate in ‘The Metaverse’; between which it may or may not be possible to share ‘Digitial Assets/Identities’: i.e. “Can my NFTs/Avatars be used in (or moved between) multiple Metaspaces?”
In conclusion, Facebook/Meta could allow users to share THEIR Digital Assets/NFTs ONLY between THEIR Metaspaces, however, in a truly Decentralised Web, we each own, and move our stuff where we want (cross chain interoperability challenges noted), and it will be possible to share these Digital Assets outside of organisation-specific walled gardens. How it evolves, is ultimately up to us.