I’m sure at one point or another, you’ve come across the term Web3. Maybe you saw it in a post or heard someone use it.

But why is it called Web3? Isn’t there just one Web? The one you and I are using now to read this article in the first place? And if there’s Web3, what’s Web2?

To explain this, we need to take a step back, starting with the internet, which came way before the Web was born.

Technically, the internet’s predecessor, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), was born in 1969.

It was through ARPANET that many of the internet tools we are familiar with were developed. These include email (1971), Project Gutenberg and ebooks (1971), the PC modem (1977), the bulletin board system (1978), spam (1978), MUDs or multi-user dungeons (1979; MUDS were the text-based precursor of multiplayer games), Usenet (1979; internet-based discussion system), and the first emoticon (1982).

The most important of these internet tools would turn out to be the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)’s ENQUIRE. Written by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, who would later invent the World Wide Web, ENQUIRE allowed CERN scientists to track people, software and projects using hyperlinks. This made ENQUIRE the precursor of the Web.

The official birthday of the internet is January 1, 1983, which is when ARPANET switched over to Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP). Why was this momentous? TCP/IP was now a universal language for all computer networks.

Some may have forgotten it, but the internet was purely text-based before the invention of the Web. Then, Berners-Lee invented the graphical World Wide Web on March 12, 1989. Instead of keeping it, he generously gave it away, forever changing human society and the course of history.

In an open letter on March 12, 2024 to mark the Web’s 35th birthday, Berners-Lee said no one could have predicted the evolution and impact of the Web.

“Three and a half decades ago, when I invented the web, its trajectory was impossible to imagine. There was no roadmap to predict the course of its evolution, it was a captivating odyssey filled with unforeseen opportunities and challenges. Underlying its whole infrastructure was the intention to allow for collaboration, foster compassion and generate creativity – what I term the 3 C’s. It was to be a tool to empower humanity. The first decade of the web fulfilled that promise – the web was decentralized with a long-tail of content and options, it created small, more localized communities, provided individual empowerment and fostered huge value.”

For a time, the Web truly was about empowering individuals. Everyone could now become a writer, publisher or broadcaster. We could create our own websites and publish our own blogs. Multimedia was even becoming a thing, with the first podcasts.

What we soon learned, however, is that the brands building their websites were not really interested in communicating with their customers. The Web became just one more box to tick off among the company’s marketing and communications channels.

The Web was supposed to change things. Instead, brands were just using their sites to broadcast content while paying lip service to customer service. You might not even get any response at all when trying to contact them online.

Web2 sought to change all this. And again, for a time, it did. 

(to be continued)