What Will the Web of Tomorrow Look Like?
Web, cryptography, metaverse, GAFAM.
Today, I invite you to explore how the web we know today was built. We’ll look at a few historical points to understand why the technologies being developed in the blockchain space are crucial for the web of tomorrow.
The Beginnings of the Web
During the late 20th century, technological advancements in microelectronics led to the creation of smaller and smaller transistors. These innovations achieved two things: the miniaturization of processors and an increase in computing power. These technological advances also helped reduce processor costs, enabling mass production for the general public. Thus, personal computers like the IBM 5150 became available to consumers. They were bulky, expensive ($1565), but they did the bare minimum: storing data and performing calculations.
However, these models could not access the Web. It wasn’t until a year later, in 1982, that the famous Minitel was born. By 1984, the Minitel network had 500,000 machines.
This marked the birth of the first Web, or rather the World Wide Web (www) as we know it today.
Towards the very end of the 20th century, Web 1.0 emerged. This is when sites we all know, such as Wikipedia, Yahoo, Google, Amazon, and eBay, came into existence. Most of these were static, “read-only” websites. The few e-commerce sites that existed used very complex algorithms.
Web 1.0 also marked the birth of the internet, a global and public network accessible to anyone.
The Web at Scale
Fueled by the dot-com bubble, the web domain was in a state of total euphoria, allowing for the emergence of new programming languages like JavaScript.
Why?
This language made it possible to integrate logical algorithms into a web page. If a condition was met, the page would react. Thus, for the first time, we saw navigation buttons appear between web pages.
Gradually, web developers used JavaScript to build increasingly advanced websites. For instance, the first social networks emerged: MySpace in 2003, and Twitter in 2006.
Where Are We Today?
Since the early 2000s, there hasn’t been, in my opinion, any real revolution on the web. The only thing that has changed is that the internet has become widely democratized.
This massive democratization has driven the tech market upward by creating huge consumer demand. Company servers quickly became unmanageable due to the constantly growing number of users.
To address this issue, solutions called IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) emerged between 2000 and 2010. Their mission is to handle the hosting of their clients’ websites.
In the very early days of the internet (between 1999 and 2005), companies like Google, MySpace, etc., had to host their websites on their own servers. But as we’ve said, managing these resources became complicated with the rapid growth of the internet at that time. Delegating this task allowed these companies to focus on their core business: their website.
The other advantage of these solutions is that they significantly reduce server management costs; only a monthly subscription to the service is needed to host a website.
The Problem with Today’s Web
Due to services like IaaS and other factors, the architecture of the web we have today is centralized by private actors. Hundreds, even thousands, of web services from different companies are stored in the same places around the world.
Furthermore, the current web is “managed” by private actors, as your operating system, browser, and search engine are run by private companies. Nothing (or almost nothing) is open-source. Your operating system is likely managed by Apple or Microsoft, your browser by Google or Mozilla, and your search engine is probably also managed by Google or Firefox.
The centralization and privatization of the web pose several problems today. The first is that users of the current web are not in control of what they do. In the real world, no one can take away your rights without due process. Yet, on the current web, anyone can have their website taken down without any investigation or dialogue.
Search engines like Google also have complete freedom to show us what they want. Facebook, for example, allegedly influenced an election by tweaking its algorithm to better recommend certain content.
The second problem is the privatization of the web. The fact that most services are owned by companies implies that their business must be profitable to continue existing. Consequently, if the final product is free, the user becomes the product.
“If it’s free, you are the product.”
Privatization thus prevents net neutrality, as companies must constantly moderate the content on their platforms, sometimes having to tip the balance towards a particular ideology.
The third and final problem is that of IaaS. When a company hosts its website with a provider, all user data is stored in a different company from the one providing the initial service.
For example, if I post a photo on Snapchat, my photo won’t be stored at Snapchat but at the company that hosts Snapchat’s services, namely Google. But the user has no idea about the agreements made between Snapchat and Google.
Google could very well use the user data provided by Snapchat to train its image recognition algorithms, for example…
(This is just a hypothetical for reflection, not a verified fact.)
So, What About the Web of Tomorrow?
The development of cryptocurrency and cryptography projects is, in my opinion, an excellent thing. Being in such a speculative sector forces project creators to deliver the best, both in terms of their websites and the technologies implemented by their teams.
For example, the rise of NFTs has shown one important thing: Users want to own things on the web, whether it’s an image, a tweet, a work of art, or a piece of virtual land.
Digital ownership could, therefore, be a central feature of the web of tomorrow.
However, there are current barriers preventing digital ownership from becoming a reality. The current design of browsers and operating systems means that digital ownership cannot be guaranteed because it is still possible to duplicate an image or video as many times as one wishes.
However, it’s worth noting that NFTs still enable something important: proof of ownership. It is thus possible to find the creator of an image if that creator has taken care to publish their content through the correct protocol.
Towards a Distributed (P2P) Web?
The other technology that is certain to arrive is the Peer-to-Peer or Distributed Web.
This concept distinguishes between three types of network architectures:
- Centralized
- Decentralized
- Distributed or Peer-to-Peer
As we explained earlier, centralization poses a real problem because it leads to a loss of control over what we do. The one at the center of the network (the governor) has all the rights.
So, would decentralization be the solution?
No, decentralization has only two advantages over centralization:
- It increases the number of governors, thus avoiding giving all the rights to the same person (or machine).
- It allows for the decentralization of governance. This means that instead of having one machine in one location, several machines spread across the globe are preferred to avoid technical problems.
But decentralization does not solve the major problem of centralization; in other words, not all members of the network have the same rights.
The difference between a decentralized and a distributed network is that a distributed network has no common governance; each member contributes to governance. Therefore, there can be no censorship by a supreme member; everyone has the same rights.
However, the golden rule that allows a distributed network to function is that no member can have a role superior to others. Everyone must have the same rights and/or duties.
Consequently, the network must be reliable; there can be no security flaws that would allow one member to gain an advantage over others.
Bitcoin is a good example to illustrate the functioning of a distributed network.
Bitcoin is defined as a Peer-to-Peer electronic payment system. It allows the transfer of funds from person A to person B without the need for a third party.
In my opinion, the Bitcoin network is a very good way to show that it is possible to build a completely distributed web that works. With over 10 years of history, the network has never been corrupted, which makes it an excellent network.
In Conclusion
The current web remains very politically divided. GAFAM wants to maintain the privatization of the web, while ordinary users like all of us want an open-source and peer-to-peer web.
It is still impossible to say which direction the web of tomorrow will take. Will the web be 50% owned by private actors and 50% by open-source? Or will one of the two models take over?
In any case, it seems important to me that users become aware of their rights and duties on the web in order to develop a critical perspective on the practices of private actors and thus on the future of the web.
I hope you enjoyed this short article and that it has sparked your critical thinking about the current web and will help you make better decisions on the next projects you analyze.
I also hope this article has taught you a few things!
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