Web 3.0 is the new phase in the evolution of the Internet and can be described as potentially disruptive in terms of change in the global digital landscape.
The three fundamentals of Web 3.0 are decentralisation, openness and broad utility to the user.
In January 2022, more than 2 out of 3 people (67,1%) use a mobile phone: there are therefore 5,3 billion users on the web. We can see a growth of about 1,8% compared to 2021.
Berners-Lee and the Semantic Web
Decentralisation implies freedom from censorship, resulting from the lack of a central authority. The bottom-up designof Web 3.0 develops its code for all to see and therefore has a fully participatory and experimental nature for the user.
In 2001, the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee coined the term Semantic Web, as a complex data network that can be processed by machines, in which much of the meaning can only be read by them. Understanding semantics is not easy for machines. With the concept of the Semantic Web, Berners-Lee wants to go beyond this vision and take the structure of the web to another level. The main objective is to enable software to perform sophisticated tasks to satisfy today’s users, who are always dissatisfied and looking for something new.
Currently, Web 3.0 has succeeded in overcoming the limits of the Semantic Web; we find ourselves in an Internet that is increasingly rich in complexity and difficult to convert into a human language.
Virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are among the innovations of this decade.
The three phases of the Web
The first version of Web 1.0 (also called syntactic web) spans the years 1990–2000. The user’s role is limited to reading the information provided and there is no exchange between the two parties. The consumer has no possibility of communication: we call this type of dialogue bottom-down.
In Web 2.0 (also called social web), which runs from 2000 to 2010 there is a first interaction between users and websites. Consumers gradually become more and more aware of their value in the digital world and start to produce, distribute and share content. This period saw the emergence of social networks such as Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Twitter and technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript frameworks (ReactJs, AngularJs, VueJs). Web 2.0 saw producers involving users, who were the real digital protagonists of those years.
Web 3.0 started around 2010 and is still going on today. The fundamental reference is to the future and to the new technologies of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, closely linked to the metaverse. An entirely new vision that will upset reality as we know it.
Web usage in Italy in 2022
According to the report Digital 2022 — Global Overview by We are social in collaboration with Hootsuite, the Italian population will grow by 60,32 million people at the beginning of 2022 with a significant increase in urbanisation (71,7%).
These data have a strong impact on the digital world: there are 78,22 million mobile phone connections and 50,85 million people who are active internet users (129,7% of the total population). Users registered on social platforms are 43,20 million, about 71,6% of the Italian population.
By now, the internet and the web are no longer a trend, but an integral part of our daily lives and in 2022, with the metaverse and virtual and augmented realities in sight, they will become even more so.
Global analysis of digital transformation
Every year the networking company Cisco produces a report with analytical forecasts of digital in the years to come. Let’s take a look at some interesting facts about the future of Web 3.0.
By 2023, almost two-thirds of the global population will have access to the internet and total users will be around 5,3 billion compared to 3,9 billion in 2018. Almost two-thirds of the global population will have access to the internet by 2023.
More than 70% of the global population will have mobile connections and the total number of subscribers will grow from 5,1 billion (66%) in 2018 to 5,7 billion (71%) by 2023. There will be approximately 14,7 billion machine-to-machine (M2M) connections.
If you are interested in new technologies, read our article Metaverse: the difference between Meta and the metaverse.
