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However, 30 years after the world wide web was created, a third generation of web technology might offer a way to change things. The DWeb, a new decentralised version of cyberspace, promises to enable better user control, more competition between and less dominance by the . But there are still serious questions over whether it's possible – or even desirable.

The first generation of the web lasted from its creation by Sir Tim Berners Lee in 1989 to roughly 2005. It was mostly a passive, "read-only" web with minimal interaction between users. Most of us were merely recipients of information. Then came Web 2.0, a "read-write web" based on social networks, wikis and blogs that let users create and share more of their own content, which increased their participation and collaboration.

Web 3.0 is the next step. In part it will be a "semantic web" or a "web of data" that can understand, combine and automatically interpret information to provide users with a much more enhanced and interactive experience. But it could also be a decentralised web that challenges the dominance of the by moving us away from relying so heavily on a few companies, technologies and a relatively small amount of internet infrastructure

Peer-to-peer technology



Some of the technologies that could make the DWeb possible are already being developed. For example, the Databox Project aims to create an open-source device that stores and controls a user's personal data locally instead of letting tech companies gather and do whatever they like with it. Zeronet is an alternative to the existing web, where websites are hosted by a network of participating computers instead of a centralised server, protected by the same cryptography that's used for Bitcoin. There's even a DWeb version of YouTube, called DTube that hosts videos across a decentralised network of computers using a "blockchain" public ledger as its database and payment system.


Risks and regulation

The DWeb also comes with some significant legal and regulatory risks. It would make policing cybercrime, including online harassment, hate speech and child abuse images, even more difficult because of its lack of central control and access to data. A centralised web helps governments make large corporations enforce rules and laws. In a decentralised web, it wouldn't even necessarily be clear which country's laws applied to a particular website, if its content was hosted all around the world.


But this relies on users taking more initiative and responsibility for their data and their online interactions. We've seen that large numbers of people are willing to take action when their day-to-day experience of the internet is threatened. However, it's not yet clear whether the current push for more regulation will align with the DWeb's principles of responsibility or place internet freedoms at risk.



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Provided by The Conversation


Citation: Web 3.0: The decentralised web promises to make the internet free again (2019, March 12) retrieved 13 May 2021 from https://phys.org/news/2019-03-web-decentralised-internet-free.html

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