Web 3.0 - unlocking a new world of jobs.
It’s fair to say that the internet is a critical component of modern life. What was once a process of connecting a phone line to be able to send a digital letter and become a battle for the fastest speeds and smoothest peer-to-peer connections. Especially in more recent times with a global pandemic, many of us have been forced into exploring the online world arguably, with greater urgency than ever before for our occupational, communicative, educational, financial and recreational needs. As our reliance on the Web has grown over the last 30 years or so, the Web itself has undergone some great advancements and evolutions during this time. And the next stage of its evolution is now firmly in sight.
Web 3.0, commonly referred to as the Decentralised Web, represents the latest generation of internet applications and services powered by distributed ledger technology, the most common being blockchain. It is, however, not exactly new, merely the slowest of evolutions of the world wide web to be adopted by technology and society. Tim-Berners Lee (creator of the internet) described this as the Semantic Web, a product of open, smarter and more autonomous communications.
In this environment, computers are able to interpret information as intelligently as humans. As such, users and machines will be able to connect more seamlessly with data, meaning that artificial intelligence (AI) will play a crucial role in making this version of the internet more intelligent and powerful in terms of its ability to process information. The effects of this in the job market describe a shift from writing the code, to writing the code for the bot to learn and autonomously evolve the code. Similarly, this expands to a new environment of decentralised companies on a global scale with a heavy requirement on development jobs learning new skills in a sandbox of creation.
what is web 1.0?
first there was web 1.0...
- web 1.0 - single-lane, communications read-only one way, online news.
- web 2.0 - multi-lane, collaborative communications, social media.
- web 3.0 - decentralisation, owning your own data, taking the power back from Facebook and Google.
Web 1.0, born in the 1980s, comprised of static “read-only” webpages created by relatively few participants. Clearly, this was a major breakthrough, allowing anyone around the world to access published content. But while users could read and browse such webpages, they could not interact with them much further than that. With no search engines available, the World Wide Web (WWW) was not the straightforward practice we know today.
In Web 1.0 there were no adverts, this level of tracking and interaction was not available. In fact, Web 1.0 was in some ways more similar to Web 3.0 than Web 2.0. The natural evolution would be from Web 1.0 to 3.0, but in the same way, as you would upgrade from a Fiat Panda to a Lamborghini.
Web 1.0 is a content delivery network (CDN) that enables the showcase of the piece of information on the websites. It can be used as a personal website and has directories that enable users to retrieve a particular piece of information.
what is web 2.0?
By 2000, however, Web 2.0 was born. Or rather web 1.0 had developed and evolved into a 2.0 version. Now, users could create their own accounts across various applications, meaning they had their own unique identities online. This was a turning point for many businesses, particularly e-commerce, as new internet companies could inexpensively market their products and services to a global base of potential online consumers. It also meant that anyone anywhere in the world could publish content to a worldwide audience, which, in turn, gave rise to the globally popular trend of blogging and fuelled user-published sites, such as Wikipedia, which became hugely successful.
Next of course came social media, a platform for users to fully utilise this new iteration of the internet in two way communication on a global scale. This was the start of the user-generated content revolution and birth of Generation C a while later. Gen C, much like Gen Z would become a term to describe those that were born into a world of technology. Only, the key difference for Gen C is more a cultural representation beyond age and about the bubble in which they live surrounded by watching, creating and interacting with online content. The development of web technologies such as JavaScript, HTML5 (HyperText Markup Language 5) and CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheets 3) during this time was pivotal in building these interactive web platforms.
Web 2.0 is also called the participative social web. It does not refer to a modification to any technical specification, but to modify the way Web pages are designed and used. Recently, AJAX and JavaScript frameworks have become a very popular means of creating web 2.0 sites. Web 3.0 finally focuses on the back-end development of the internet.
what is web 3.0?
Web 3.0 is the evolution of web utilisation and interaction which includes altering the Web into a database. It allows for an upgrade to the back-end of the web, after a long time of focus on the front-end (Web 2.0 has mainly been about AJAX, tagging, and another front-end user-experience innovation). Web 3.0 is a term that is used to describe many evolutions of web usage and interaction among several paths. In this, data isn’t owned but instead shared, where services show different views for the same web / the same data. If we take Web 1.0 as single-lane, Web 2.0 and dual lane, Web 3.0 is multi-lane. In fact, in the process of this development, you could describe the Web 3.0 upgrade as multiple highways of traffic, stacked vertically and then add flying cars the can pass either side of those lanes, above and below.
Ok, absorbed all that? Let's continue, the Semantic Web (3.0) promises to establish “the world’s information” in a more reasonable way than Google could ever attain with their existing engine schema. This is particularly true from the perspective of machine conception as opposed to human understanding. The Semantic Web necessitates the use of a declarative ontological language like OWL to produce domain-specific ontologies that machines can use to reason about information and make new conclusions, not simply match keywords. Recent Google upgrades to their search capability have already been pushing this with the use of A.I. (artificial intelligence). Human search is the simplistic term applied to this feature of searching for intent in words. Early adoptions of this were exampled by the search for milk-producing animals, which may have just about understood to reply with cows and goats etc. But then a follow-up search for where to buy it would revert to a generic search of 'buy it'. The semantic upgrades since, from Hummingbird to RankBrain and BERT all now focus on context changing the way marketers and SEO content writers need to adapt their articles for intent and purpose. All of this is now backed by the page experience as a focus in 2021.
five features of web 3.0
1. Semantic Web
The semantic web improves web technologies in demand to create, share and connect content through search and analysis based on the capability to comprehend the meaning of words, rather than on keywords or numbers.
2. Artificial Intelligence
Combining this capability with natural language processing, in Web 3.0, computers can distinguish information like humans in order to provide faster and more relevant results. They become more intelligent to fulfil the requirements of users.
3. 3D Graphics / Immersive experiences
The three-dimensional design is being used widely in websites and services in Web 3.0. Museum guides, computer games, e-commerce, geospatial contexts, etc. are all examples that use 3D graphics.
4. Connectivity
With Web 3.0, information is more connected thanks to semantic metadata. As a result, the user experience evolves to another level of connectivity that leverages all the available information.
5. Ubiquity
Content is accessible by multiple applications, every device is connected to the web, the services can be used everywhere.
top jobs in the web 3.0 space
Now if we're looking at which job aren't big right now, but will be either very soon or next, the following are key areas to research.
AR filters
From TikTok to Instagram, across social media on phones and everywhere you look on mobile, Augmented Reality creators are a newly discovered resource with many using the technology but few knowing how to create it or how powerful it can become.
3D immersive experiences
For website design, the newly hyped metaverse, NFTs and virtual reality development; the ability to build out a virtual space to showcase either a design, item or place is hot property right now. Virtual museums, digital land ownership, being able to put on a VR headset and set into a mansion filled with digital art worth billions or play an online game with valuable assets is the next step in technology implementation.
Metaverse / VR marketing and SEO
From game building to coding in online digital advertising in a 3D space on virtual assets on both public and private decentralised locations, a job in this industry will be the next level for marketers. Understanding virtual SEO is still being unpacked as search engines are ported from a centralised location to a decentralised blockchain.
Virtual fashion designer
NFT (non-fungible token) based gaming is also seeing strong growth in 2021 into 2022. These assets are being imported into virtual game world's such as Sandbox and much like traditional online games, come with the ability to create companion assets or alter the original. Designing the look and feel of digital avatars and game characters is another sector yet unexplored in great detail.
the decentralisation of the web 3.0
how does the web become decentralised?
The development of Web 3.0 has, at least in part, been informed by the shortcomings of Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 before it. The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 was a catalyst for questions around trust in a number of institutions: the commercial banks whose business practices caused the crisis; the central banks that never saw it coming; and the governments that failed to address it effectively or hold the most irresponsible and negligent individuals to account.
MakerDAO, the creator of the popular stable cryptocurrency coin DAI, wrote in April 2020.
“The drawbacks of centralized power became more evident, as did the power of technology.”
Considering these concerns, Web 3.0’s decentralised architecture seeks to address the issues that have stemmed from such problems, including user trust, privacy and transparency. By utilising blockchain networks of decentralised nodes that can validate cryptographically secured transactions, there is no need to rely on a single centralised entity as the source of truth. Instead, self-executing smart contracts can be employed that eliminate the requirement for third parties to be involved.
Simple right? Your data should be yours, your money should be owned by you and every transaction you make should be a one to one movement without anyone else watching it or taking that money, holding it, using it for their own benefits, the releasing the same amount after a period of time to the end-user...This of course is the issue with centralised banks.
Of course, acknowledging the pressing need for Web 3.0 requires recognising how important decentralisation has become.
As Web 3.0 networks will operate through decentralized protocols—the founding blocks of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology—we can expect to see a strong convergence and symbiotic relationship between these three technologies and other fields.
They will be interoperable, seamlessly integrated, automated through smart contracts and used to power anything from microtransactions in Africa, censorship-resistant P2P data file storage and sharing with applications like Filecoin, or Immutable to completely change every company conduct and operation of their business
removing the monetisation of data.
Many are anticipating the transition from large, centralised entities providing services and access to their platforms in exchange for monetising and profiting from users’ personal data under Web 2.0 to one involving decentralised applications enabling user participation without data monetisation under Web 3.0.
Instead of data being owned, then, it is shared, with different applications and services showing different views for the same data. And, perhaps most importantly, users will once more regain ownership and control over their personal data.
Such user benefits will have considerable implications for such areas as social media, through which control of personal data has repeatedly been compromised. The current internet is an oligopoly market. Not only can the leading social media platforms own and use their users' data, they can also change the rules. It has reached a stage now as Facebook pivot to rename themselves Meta, and in the eyes of mainstream 'own', the metaverse for its users; that a single entity has so much control and power of a person's online reality it could be argued their existence is equally owned by a single brand.
By attempting to decentralise everyone's data, there would be no need for usernames or passwords, or identities pegged to a company. Every user can be tagged to a digital wallet address, only that user can ever know the private key of that wallet and gain access to its information. That user can interact with a multitude of platforms but their data is entirely owned by them and privacy is fully under their control.
the role of 3D and virtual space.
Three-dimensional (3D) graphics will also be a crucial attribute of Web 3.0, with many anticipating this version of the internet to be a “spatial” web, with digital information existing in space and becoming inseparable from the physical world. The convergence of key technologies such as augmented and virtual reality, 5G networking for mobile space interactions, the internet of things (IoT), AI (artificial intelligence) and blockchain will underpin this 3D Web that will eventually remove the boundaries between digital content and the physical world. Already we are seeing the first successful 3D designs in websites and applications through computer games, museum guides and real-estate property tours.
IoT will also be fundamental in making Web 3.0 ubiquitous, with a whole host of new smart devices being connected to the Web and thus accessing content. This could mean that, eventually, everyone has access to the internet at all times, thanks to this vast network of internet-connected devices.
Of course, we are not quite at the stage of fully realising this next-generation internet, despite having been in development for more than 10 years. Limitations that still exist particularly regarding data storage and data-processing power mean that scalability presents a pertinent challenge to Web 3.0. Indeed, blockchain technology continues to struggle with scalability issues, although it increasingly seems that it will be a matter of when rather than if it successfully overcomes these current roadblocks.
What’s more, it seems highly unlikely that those giant, centralised entities such as governments and multinational corporations will simply relinquish their control over profit-generating data. In some instances, this data is their very lifeblood and, as such, wresting control of it from them will be far from easy.
Nonetheless, with the decentralisation juggernaut in full flow, it would seem that the opportunity for individuals to take back control from the few corporate behemoths that have dominated the internet thus far is now closer than ever before. And a fairer, more transparent online world awaits us all.
If you're interested in Web 3.0 and emerging technologies the following developer jobs may interest you...
