A lot is made about Web 3.0. It is a term that is tossed around, so much that it made us immune to what it truly is. As humans, when something becomes familiar, we tend to stop investigating.
Many feel that Web 3.0 is just the monetization of the Internet. With the present system, we see social media companies, as an example, making a ton of money off users. Thus, we see the next generation as a means of us making money through tokenization.
This is, however, only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, the financial aspects of Web 3.0 is a fraction of what we ultimately see.
The world around us is centralized. When we look at entities such as governments, Amazon, brokerage houses, stock exchanges, Visa, and the educational system, we see a bunch of centralized entities that are basically top-down in nature. This is something that formed over thousands of years, even since we started civilization.
It is a model, however, that is about to be attacked. Here is where we see Web 3.0 really taking things to another level.
Decentralization is not inherently better than centralization. They both have their positives, and their negatives. However, the drawbacks to centralization advanced to the point where it is vulnerable. Hence, we can expect the toppling of many of the existing institutions around us.
The Internet is really a small piece of human history, in terms of the time it is around. When compared to the centuries of other models, the Internet economy is just a baby. We are only now learning how to operate this child. Fortunately, it is growing up fast.
With each passing year, the idea of the Internet being separate from everything else is diminishing. This is really going to accelerate as we ideas such as the "Internet of Things" start to take hold. We are heading towards a more automated world. At the same time, we are seeing digitization advancing into areas that few ever considered.
It is impossible to stop progress. Entities can try to slow it down yet, in the end, it always fails. This is especially true when dealing with technological advancement.
Web 2.0 is going to die, as well as many of the entities that are tied to it, simply because a better system is coming along. When growth, efficiency, cost savings, and expanded markets is offered, a technology cannot help but to be embraced. These are some of the foundations for increasing productivity.
Actually a more accurate way of presenting this is that Web 2.0 will be swallowed up by Web 3.0 since the later is just the evolution of the former. Many of the companies that are Web 2.0 will end up going away.
The present Internet is full of "gatekeepers". These entities exist simply to bring people together and facilitate some type of transaction. On social media it is the sharing of ideas while in other realms it is financial. Either way, we can see the hindrance these have become.
People who are online spend a fair portion of their day in that environment. Web 2.0 brought us information sharing via video/audio, mobile, and cloud. It was a step forward from what existed before.
Web 3.0 is now bringing open, trustless, and permissionless to the table. We still are operating in a manner where the centralized entities have say over who can access the platforms or develop on them. This only stifles innovation, causing humanity to fall behind in the historical productivities curve.
The present economy is filled with waste. We see it as a result of massive inefficiencies in the system. Web 3.0 is about to change this since we are about to embark upon the next leg of the sharing economy. The biggest change here is time.
Web 3.0 is operating 24/7/365. We already see this with the trading of cryptocurrency. There are no "market hours". The same is true for DeFi. "Banker hours" will also be a thing of the past. We already see a lot of this with credits cards, which can be processed at any time, most anywhere in the world. Web 3.0 is going to bring these experience to a lot more areas.
Not only this, but we are going to see data handled much differently. Web 2.0 amassed an enormous amount of data via the advent of mobile. To process this, cloud exploded. Data farms popped up everywhere with powerful AI systems analyzing what was fed in. This is obviously controlled by centralized entities who maximize the information for their own profit.
What is starting to happen is the concept of edge computing is coming upon us. This is the idea that computation starts to take place further away from the centralized entities. We see this because of two reasons: computational power keeps increasing making edge devices more powerful and Web 3.0 is starting to decentralize the data. Both are creating a new paradigm for how data is handled as well as who owns it.
It is no secret as to how valuable data is. Years ago, it was called the "new oil". Look at the earnings for companies like Facebook and Google to see how profitable data can be. Web 2.0 was built upon enormous databases.
Web 3.0 is being erected upon data-banks. Under this scenario, every piece of data will be monetized and controlled by its creator. Thus, the entire Internet will be a giant, distributed money machine.
There is another piece to this puzzle: it is not relegated to just the digital world.
We are seeing the world around us digitized. It is being filled with sensors. Trillions of them are being installed around us, and probable even within us. Hence, the amount of data produced is only going to keep expanding.
This is the true inflationary matter. As the data explodes, we are going to see the efficiencies of the world skyrocket. This will put enormous downward cost pressure on, well, everything. It will also increase the user experience across the board.
For example, we saw a lot of companies achieve Six Sigma manufacturing over the last 30 years. Through automation, we saw the error rate drop to a few instances per million.
Does the local restaurant achieve anywhere near that rate? How about the overall driving habits in a local community? Do we see that with our governments? Is that the error rate on the local garage that services our vehicles?
Hell, are we anywhere near close to that rate ourselves?
The answer is obviously not. Yet with automation, we will see our world move in that direction. One of the keys is more data which we are generating globally. The challenge is that, presently, it is residing behind Facebook's wall. That is not great for forward progress.
Here is where we see things shifting. As more utility is presented with Web 3.0 applications, the data generated will only expand. This is going to keep feeding the system moving us toward this global databank that each of us is a part of. Since the rate of growth is so large, coupled with the continued advancement in our computational power and storage, we can easily see how overall production rates are set to explode.
Web 3.0 is going to eat all that is around simply because it is a more powerful force than what we have in place today.
And as always, progress cannot be stopped.
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