{"id":47150,"date":"2019-03-12T12:04:17","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T19:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=47150"},"modified":"2019-03-12T12:04:17","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T19:04:17","slug":"web-3-0-the-decentralised-web-promises-to-make-the-internet-free-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/web-3-0-the-decentralised-web-promises-to-make-the-internet-free-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Web 3.0: the decentralised web promises to make the internet free again"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nHave you recently considered\u00a0deleting your Facebook<\/a>\u00a0account,\u00a0boycotting Amazon<\/a>\u00a0or trying to find an\u00a0alternative to Google<\/a>? You wouldn\u2019t be alone. The tech giants are\u00a0invading our privacy<\/a>, misusing our data, strangling\u00a0economic growth<\/a>\u00a0and helping governments\u00a0spy on us<\/a>. Yet because these few companies own so many of the internet\u2019s key services, it seems there is\u00a0little people can do<\/a>\u00a0to avoid having to interact with them if they want to stay online.<\/p>\n

However, 30 years after the world wide web\u00a0was created<\/a>, a third generation of web technology might offer a way to change things.\u00a0The DWeb<\/a>, a new decentralised version of cyberspace, promises to enable better user control, more competition between internet firms and less dominance by the large corporations. But there are still serious questions over whether it\u2019s possible \u2013 or even desirable.<\/p>\n

The first generation of the web lasted from its creation by Sir Tim Berners Lee in 1989 to roughly 2005. It was mostly a passive,\u00a0\u201cread-only\u201d web<\/a>\u00a0with minimal interaction between users. Most of us were merely recipients of information. Then came Web 2.0,\u00a0a \u201cread-write web\u201d<\/a>\u00a0based on social networks, wikis and blogs that let users create and share more of their own content, which increased their participation and collaboration.<\/p>\n

Web 3.0 is the next step. In part it will be a\u00a0\u201csemantic web\u201d<\/a>\u00a0or a\u00a0\u201cweb of data\u201d<\/a>\u00a0that can understand, combine and automatically interpret information to provide users with a much more enhanced and interactive experience. But it could also be a decentralised web that challenges the dominance of the tech giants by moving us away from relying so heavily on a few companies, technologies and a relatively small amount of internet infrastructure<\/p>\n

Peer-to-peer technology<\/strong><\/h4>\n

When we currently access the web, our computers use the HTTP protocol in the form of web addresses to find information stored at a fixed location, usually on a single server. In contrast,\u00a0the DWeb<\/a>\u00a0would find information based on its content, meaning it could be stored in multiple places at once. As a result, this form of the web also involves all computers providing services as well as accessing them, known as peer-to-peer connectivity.<\/p>\n

This system would enable us to break down the immense databases that are currently held centrally by internet companies rather than users (hence the decentralised web). In principle, this would also better protect users from private and government surveillance as data would no longer be stored in a way that was easy for third parties to access. This actually harks back to the the original philosophy\u00a0behind the internet<\/a>, which was first created to decentralise US communications during the Cold War to make them less vulnerable to attack.<\/p>\n