Context:
Former Twitter CEO recently announced his vision for a new decentralized web platform that is being called Web 5.0 and is being built with an aim to return “ownership of data and identity to individuals”.
Relevance
GS III- Awareness In The Fields Of It, Space, Computers, Robotics, Nano-Technology, Bio-Technology
Dimensions of the Article:
- About Web 1
- About Web 2
- About Web 3
- What is Web 5.0?
- What are the use cases for Web 5.0?
About Web 1
- Web 1.0 is the world wide web or the internet that was invented in 1989.
- It became popular from 1993.
- The internet in the Web 1.0 days was mostly static web pages where users would go to a website and then read and interact with the static information.
- Even though there were ecommerce websites in the initial days it was still a closed environment and the users themselves could not create any content or post reviews on the internet. Web 1.0 lasted until 1999.
About Web 2
- Web 2.0 started in some form in the late 1990s itself though 2004 was when most of its features were fully available.
- It is still the age of Web 2.0 now.
- The differentiating characteristic of Web 2.0 compared to Web 1.0 is that users can create content.
- They can interact and contribute in the form of comments, registering likes, sharing and uploading their photos or videos and perform other such activities.
- Primarily, a social media kind of interaction is the differentiating trait of Web 2.0.
About Web 3
- The model, a decentralized internet to be run on blockchain technology, would be different from the versions in use, Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.
- In Web3, users will have ownership stakes in platforms and applications unlike now where tech giants control the platforms.
- Gavin Wood, founder of Ethereum, a block chain technology company, used the term Web3 first in 2014 and in the past few years many others have added to the idea of Web3.
- In 2021, owing to the popularity of crypto-currency, more discussions happened on Web3.
What is Web 5.0?
- Web 5.0 is aimed at “building an extra decentralized web that puts you in control of your data and identity”.
- Simply put, Web 5.0 is Web 2.0 plus Web 3.0 that will allow users to ‘own their identity’ on the Internet and ‘control their data’.
- Both Web 3.0 and Web 5.0 envision an Internet without threat of censorship – from governments or big tech, and without fear of significant outages.
- Difference between Web 5.0 and Web 3.0: Web 3.0 isn’t truly decentralized or owned by its users, but is instead controlled by various “venture capitalists and limited partners”.
What are the use cases for Web 5.0?
About changing the “control of identity”,
- Alice holds a digital wallet that securely manages her identity, data, and authorizations for external apps and connections.
- Alice uses her wallet to sign in to a new decentralized social media app.
- Because Alice has connected to the app with her decentralized identity, she does not need to create a profile, and all the connections, relationships, and posts she creates through the app are stored with her, in her decentralized web node.
- Now Alice can switch apps whenever she wants, taking her social persona with her.
Talking about giving users control over their own data,
- It cities example of another user, Bob, and describes him as a music lover who hates having his personal data locked to a single vendor as it forces him to regurgitate his playlists and songs over and over again across different music apps.
- Thankfully there’s a way out of this maze of vendor-locked silos: Bob can keep this data in his decentralized web node.
- This way Bob is able to grant any music app access to his settings and preferences, enabling him to take his personalized music experience wherever he chooses.
-Source: Indian Express
