Rigveda 2-2 : There isn’t, wasn’t and won’t be a Web2.
Nobody can clarify when Web 1 ended and when the highly subjective ‘Web2’ is supposed to have started.
No clear launch date, technology (or collection of technologies) release, between two (supposed) different iterations of web.
Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 15 (Sept 9 – Dec 7, 2024) has started registrations; register today for early bird discounts.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations here.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and invest in Africa’s finest startups here.
The first ever web domain was symbolics.com, registered in 1985 by Symbolics Inc, a US computer company.
People talk about the move from a ‘declarative’ web to a ‘participatory’ ‘interactive’ and ‘engagement’ led web, but all the evidence is, that this was a gradually evolving process where individual technologies came along, distinctly, separately, and during different time frames to move the needle.
Slowly over a two-decade plus period, increased internet bandwidth, higher performance and smaller chip design, innovative coding technologies, larger memory, better cameras, and improvements in graphics handling chips, all contributed to an ever improving ‘rich content’, and the interactive solutions that could share it, and communicate about it.
Facebook was in a Social Media Space on its own before it saw competition from products such as Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok, but it was by no means the first Social Media Platform. Facebook was preceded by Friendster, MySpace, and Hi5. The granddaddy of them all, SixDegrees, was released in 1997.
The first mention of Web 2 didn’t come until around 2009. Two things happened in this period. It was the year Pinterest was launched, but more important, it was also the seed of Bitcoin’s popularization.
Web 2 didn’t start to get regular mentions until this decade, and that has been usually in the context of people attempting to misrepresent Web 3.
The rise of the ‘Silos’
‘Silos’ are platforms within which an internet-based business attempts to snare internet users keeping them and their ‘traffic’ internal as long as possible.
The first silos were ‘portals’, which were a collection of stand-alone applications, all accessible from their home page. They were the start of ‘interactive’ web and included general articles, a forum, shopping, a ticker line with news feed, a free text message service and games (non-exhaustive list).
Portals began to appear around 1995, long before the advent of smartphones.
Examples of Portals were Yahoo and AoL. Portals contained multiple unconnected features under an umbrella and were sometimes owned by partners or business subscribers.
Gradually as individual new technologies came along, portals mutated into Social Media with the advent of Six Degrees in 1997.
Online Platforms did not reach ‘Silo Status’ at either the birth of Portals, or Social Media. It was a gradual process with no clear ‘tipping point’.
Gradually as technology became increasingly sophisticated, particularly with the advent of ‘cloud’ and phone ‘apps’, leading tech companies not initially in Portals or Platforms began to develop their own Silos, including Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
The gradual development of Silos over 3 decades mirrored the equally gradually improving Web across the spectrum of the same timelines.
The DO NOT represent a separate iteration of Web.
Google and Meta, just like single individuals, are ‘just another web user’.
No evidence of mass awareness or acceptance of a second successive iteration of ‘Pre-blockchain’ Web.
As we look through archives and footprints online, over time, we cannot find any broad acceptance of ‘Web 2’ in the age of ‘legacy web’ i.e. the pre-blockchain era of Web. When we look at old archives of online content, such as a ‘roll back’ of Wikipedia, or the ‘Wayback Machine’ which can give us snapshots of internet content in bygone times, we can see nobody promoting themselves as a professional in any aspect of ‘Web2’, in any online profile anywhere.
Why? Well, because it never existed.
Never an industry association or Internet/Web Authority issuance of a set of specifications to be met by (supposed) ‘Web 2’ and with a clear demarcation between it, and a (supposed) Web 1.
Different Associations and Authorities set the standards across all things Hardware, Software, IoT, Internet and Web.
For example, there are USB standards differences between USB 3.1 Gen 1 and the latest Gen 2.
There are clear and measurable specification differences in phone signal transmission, that distinguish between 3G, 4G and 5G transmissions.
For WIFI, we have equally clear sets of standards that separate WIFI 5, WIFI 6 and WIFI 6E.
Advocates of a division of ‘Legacy’ (pre-blockchain) Web into a (supposed) Web1 and Web2, cannot cite any authority prevailing over the change, the specification and standards required, or the ‘watershed’ moment at which it is supposed to have happened.
Instead, what we have is ‘Web 3’ professionals, or ‘Web 3 aware’ enthusiasts, looking at ‘Legacy Web’ pointing to divergent differences across the evolution spectrum, and retrospectively claiming them to be ‘Web1’ and ‘Web2’.
There is no sense of specifications and standards, nor tech driver watershed.
The pre-Web3 world is very meticulous in this regard. The looseness and woolliness around the supposed Web 2 sounds like degen speak in Web 3.
If Web2 were a thing, then those who supposedly use it all the time, but don’t know about Web 3, would not only know about it, they would be the most to talk or write about it.
With every growth of technology, while there are those who jump in both feet first as early adopters, there are also those who stay in the legacy age, even though the writing is on the wall.
Yes, – hydrocarbon burning electricity stations moved on to nuclear power, and then on to different types of eco-power.
Horse drawn carts moved on to Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs) and we are in transition to an age of Electric Vehicles (EVs).
Those who are stubborn about the outdated technology may not even know about what comes next, but they sure know about the one they understand and commit to.
So if this ‘Web 2’ really existed, isn’t it reasonable to think that those with absolutely no concept of Web 3, but seasoned in this ‘Web 2’ field would be talking and writing about it?
Well they don’t!.
All of the content in online platforms that mentions Web 2, are advocates, or somehow involved with Web 3.
When Henry Ford mass produced the Ford Model T, he promoted mass ICE vehicle product. He was confident in his own vision for ICE, and didn’t concern himself with the history of horses, or iterations of horse breeding evolution.
He was an advocate for ICE transport advancement and he left horses for the horse folk.
The reality is folk feigning Web 3, invented Web 2 as a crutch to explain away Web 3 founding concepts rooted in decentralization, and 9ja Cosmos’ Rigveda 2-1.
By drawing fancy iconograms, they create a false pretext of product evolution, deflecting Web 3 to a product based entity, and away from its user state entity as an ‘end-to-end decentralized UX’.
People in legacy Web, and not connected with Web3 in any way, don’t write of Web 2. There was no avalanche of online content about Web 2 between Six Degrees in 1997 and the advent of Bitcoin in 2008.
Since the legacy Web incumbents don’t even acknowledge Web 2 existence, There isn’t, wasn’t and won’t be a Web2.
Rigveda 2 – 1 : Web 3 is as an ‘End-to-End Decentralized UX’
Rigveda 2 – 2 : ‘There isn’t, wasn’t and won’t be a Web2’
9ja Cosmos is here…
Get your .9jacom and .9javerse Web 3 domains for $4 at:
Preview our Sino Amazon/Sinosignia releases (Ente)
Preview our Sino Amazon/Sinosignia releases (Pinterest)
Visit 9ja Cosmos LinkedIn Page