Why I think Web 3.0 is a Load of Nonsense

You know, I still hear a decent amount of people debating what Web 2.0 is and how to define it. The CEO of Google refers to it as a marketing term (this confuses me somewhat) whereas other people define it in many different way: ‘a shift in who and how content is created’ or ‘user-generated content’ or ‘new technologies and platforms that have revolutionized the way we use the Internet’ etc. So why are we even talking about 3.0 when we aren't truly sure what 2.0 is yet?

“Web 2.0 is a paradigm shift much like democracy is to a former dictatorship state”

I have a broader more sociological (ish) view of what Web 2.0 is (don’t worry, I’m getting to my point about 3.0): Web 2.0 is a paradigm shift in the way people interact with the Internet and it’s users, much like Democracy is to former dictatorship state.



Figure 1 below is the traditional information model and consists of the model TV, newspapers, magazines and even the Internet used to operate with. Basically, they held all the information at a central point to where everyone would come to view it. So basically they held the power and usually if you wanted a piece of the space, you paid handsomely for it. So content was controlled, skewed and biased and terms were dictated to you to a certain degree.




However in figure 2, Web 2.0 has opened up the game to allow anyone to publish content and be influential with it as well, I like to refer to this as the Lunatic Fringe Model as all the information and content movement resides on the outer edge of the model and there is little control over what is said and how it moves. So people dictate what content is online, much like a democracy. So in essence, Web 2.0 technology is not some new fangled way of thinking, it is simply a way of the Internet aligning with how everything else happens in the real world. Purchasing power has long shifted back to the consumer (the masses), who runs the country (in theory) is decided by the people (the masses), and online content is now created and approved or disapproved by Internet users (the masses).





Now people want to go and shift this entire paradigm again (only a short small years later) by coining the phrase Web 3.0? So if the Internet was a country, which has shifted from a dictatorship to a democracy and it’s all working pretty well and more people are interested, why on earth would we want to go and change it to Communism or something else?

Now I understand that the way Web 2.0 works has changed a bit since it first broke out but I don’t think it’s changed enough to warrant a new version. To me it sounds like a few glory hoggers have seen a ripple and called it a Tsunami just in case it turns into one so that they can say they were the first to spot it. For me Web 3.0 is another universe away, how about we take it easy and let 2.0 play itself out and if we really need to acknowledge some ripples, let rather call it Web 2.1. Not such a dramatic change but a change none the less.