Web 5.0

Why in the News?

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently announced his vision for a new decentralised web platform that is being called Web 5.0.

Web 5.0 is being developed by Dorsey’s Bitcoin business unit, The Block Head (TBH)
Web 5.0 is called “The Telepathic Web” or “The Symbionet Web”
It is called telepathic because the chips in a user’s brain could instruct devices on what action to take after reading emotional cues in terms of electric signals in the user’s brain
Aim: To build an extra decentralised web that puts users in control of their 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’
To access the decentralised Web 5.0, users will have a digital wallet that stores their identity, data and authorisations
When the user logs on to a decentralised social media app, she or he will not have to build a profile because the digital wallet already has her verified identity
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

In 2014, Gavin Wood coined the term Web3
Web 3.0 generally refers to the next generation of the World Wide Web
It offers a decentralised internet to be run on blockchain technology, which 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
Web 3.0 will be driven by Artificial Intelligence and machine learning where machines will be able to interpret information like humans

Currently, if a seller has to make a business to the buyer, both the buyer and seller need to be registered on a “platform” like Amazon or eBay
This “platform” currently authenticates that the buyer and seller are genuine parties to the transaction
Web3 tries to remove the role of the “platform”
For the buyer and seller to be authenticated, the usual proofs aided by block chain technology will be used in Web 3.0
Thus, Web3 enables peer to peer (seller to buyer) transactions by eliminating the role of the intermediary

In Web 2.0, most of the data on the internet and the internet traffic are handled by a few large companies creating issues of data privacy, data security and abuse of data
Web3 offers a solution to these problems
A decentralised internet based on blockchain will mean users get to be ‘owners’ as well

Web 1.0 is the World Wide Web or the internet that was invented in 1989
Web 1.0 was mostly static where users would go to a website and read and interact with static information
Users themselves could not create any content or post reviews on the internet

In Web 2.0, most of the data on the internet and the internet traffic are owned or handled by very few big companies
This has created issues related to data privacy, data security and abuse of such data
The differentiating characteristic of Web 2.0 compared to Web1.0 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

Blockchain derives its name from the digital databases or ledgers where information is stored as “blocks’’ that are coupled together forming “chains”
Every block in the chain contains information of transactions made and every new transaction’s information is added to each participant’s ledger
A decentralised framework makes the system and the information stored therein fraud-proof, transparent and credible
Bitcoin and other digital currencies such as Ethereum use blockchain technology to function

World Wide Web which is also known as a Web, is a collection of websites or web pages stored in web servers and connected to local computers through the internet
These websites contain text pages, digital images, audios, videos, etc
The Web is viewed through web browser software such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox
The Web was invented in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee, while consulting at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland

News Source: The Hindu