Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? You You know? Pretty soon
Speaker 1: I planned to do an episode about the concept of
Speaker 1: Web three or Web three point oh, and those terms
Speaker 1: have a lot of buzz around them. Um, there's also
Speaker 1: some competing definitions, which is fun for something that's kind
Speaker 1: of still in the process of coalescing, but that might
Speaker 1: make you wonder, you know, what the heck was Web
Speaker 1: two point oh or even Web one point oh. And
Speaker 1: I have covered this on very old episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: but I thought it would be good to do it
Speaker 1: tidbits episode on the topic. So here's tech Stuff tidbits.
Speaker 1: Web one and Web two. And first of all, there
Speaker 1: really was no Web one point oh, at least not formally,
Speaker 1: and in fact you could argue the same for Web
Speaker 1: two point oh. Really, during the earliest days of the Web,
Speaker 1: there was no one there to say this is version
Speaker 1: one point oh, Like you had version numbers for the
Speaker 1: various protocols, but the Web itself we did not designate
Speaker 1: as being Web one. It was just you know, the web.
Speaker 1: It was just a thing, kind of like how during
Speaker 1: the First World War no one called it World War
Speaker 1: One because that would be cynical and pessimistic. I mean,
Speaker 1: it also would have been accurate. But at the time,
Speaker 1: the more hopeful humans out there were kind of crossing
Speaker 1: their fingers that there wouldn't be another, you know, war
Speaker 1: to end all wars, like another global conflict similar to
Speaker 1: World War One. Sadly there was, but you know, at
Speaker 1: the time they weren't thinking that. So in the beginning,
Speaker 1: it was just the web, you know, just websites with
Speaker 1: web pages. The first website was launched on August six,
Speaker 1: and it was in fact a website about the Worldwide
Speaker 1: Web project itself from Tim Berner's lead, the person who
Speaker 1: invented the web effectively um and it listed instructions on
Speaker 1: how to create web pages and to use hypertext to
Speaker 1: link documents, that is, pages together, and that would allow
Speaker 1: visitors to navigate from one page to another. The term
Speaker 1: web two point oh wouldn't emerge until nearly a decade
Speaker 1: later in and it was a writer named Darcy de
Speaker 1: Nucci who coined the term in a paper titled Fragmented
Speaker 1: Future or an article titled Fragmented Future. By the way,
Speaker 1: you can find that article online. You can read it
Speaker 1: for free, and I highly recommend you do it. It's
Speaker 1: you know, it's a historical document at this point, but
Speaker 1: it's it's incredible to see how much Darcy was predicting
Speaker 1: that actually became a thing. Darcy's thesis was that the
Speaker 1: web at that stage in was about to go through
Speaker 1: a truly transformational evolution um and in fact was already
Speaker 1: in the process of doing so. And let's let's cast
Speaker 1: our minds back to the early web. And you may
Speaker 1: owe my Drew gees not remember what that was like.
Speaker 1: Things changing so scoring now and people think quick to forget,
Speaker 1: but you know, back in the early early days of
Speaker 1: the web, web pages were static. Like you would set
Speaker 1: out to build a web page, it would probably look
Speaker 1: a bit like a page in a book, and once
Speaker 1: you were done, chances were that's just how it was
Speaker 1: going to be until either you know, whatever machine was
Speaker 1: hosting the file crashed and the file was no longer available,
Speaker 1: or you know, you deleted it to put something else
Speaker 1: up or whatever. So visiting the web was a lot
Speaker 1: like flipping through the pages of a book, or you know,
Speaker 1: you might want to be more accurate, say like the
Speaker 1: pages in a series of magazines that had all been
Speaker 1: stapled together and shuffled up, and the stuff on the
Speaker 1: pages might be really interesting, or it might be really informative,
Speaker 1: or or really entertaining. It could be a list of
Speaker 1: great jokes. But the fact was those pages didn't change, right.
Speaker 1: The content on that page on day one would be
Speaker 1: exactly the same on day one hundred and the same
Speaker 1: on day one thousand. So you would probably just go
Speaker 1: to the page once to learn something, and chances are
Speaker 1: you'd never return again. There would be no reason to,
Speaker 1: there'd be nothing new there. And so the experience of
Speaker 1: the web had really limited interactivity, and mostly it was
Speaker 1: confined to clicking on any active links they're on a page,
Speaker 1: and then going to some other similarly static page. So
Speaker 1: it was an incredible achievement, an amazing tool, but it
Speaker 1: was still, especially when you look at what the web
Speaker 1: is now, limited in abilities and scope. I Darcy's point
Speaker 1: was that the web could and would do much much
Speaker 1: more now. The reason that that could even happen was
Speaker 1: actually due to the convergence of many things, and all
Speaker 1: of those things were made possible because of the foundation
Speaker 1: of the basic protocols or sets of rules if you prefer.
Speaker 1: That's what protocols are. They are just kind of like
Speaker 1: instructions or rule sets. Anyway, there are some basic protocols
Speaker 1: that support the Internet in general and the Web in particular.
Speaker 1: So for those protocols, you've got the Hypertext Protocol or
Speaker 1: h T t P, very important for the Web. This
Speaker 1: is the protocol that allows things like the linking of
Speaker 1: documents together. And you've also got a pair of protocols
Speaker 1: called t c P I P and that governs how
Speaker 1: files move across networks and across the Internet. So these
Speaker 1: protocols coupled with the Uniform Resource Locator or u r
Speaker 1: L UH that was really important to The r L
Speaker 1: denotes a specific file location on a network, so that way,
Speaker 1: when you are clicking a link in your browser to
Speaker 1: take you to another page, the browser can actually call
Speaker 1: up that page because the u r L has the location. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: you know, you wouldn't know what computer was hosting that
Speaker 1: particular page, and you would do nothing would happen. You know,
Speaker 1: you would just be searching for something. But all of
Speaker 1: these different things made the Web stuff possible, and those
Speaker 1: would not change. I mean, they would evolve, but they
Speaker 1: wouldn't become a totally new thing. So Web two point
Speaker 1: oh would not involve overhauling the bedrock of the web itself.
Speaker 1: It wasn't about scrapping what came before and building something new.
Speaker 1: It was more about kind of changing the features that
Speaker 1: you would find on websites themselves. So we had these
Speaker 1: other technologies that were enhancing the web experience. There were
Speaker 1: new markup languages, there were new versions of HTML like
Speaker 1: dynamic HDML. There were new protocols that allowed for streaming
Speaker 1: media like streaming audio and streaming video. There were enhancements
Speaker 1: that allowed for again like dynamic elements on the web
Speaker 1: pages themselves, so a page could have something that could
Speaker 1: update over and over again, which also meant that there
Speaker 1: would be reasons for people to return to that same
Speaker 1: page over and over again because it wouldn't be the
Speaker 1: exact same thing they had seen when they came on
Speaker 1: day one. In addition, there could be elements that would
Speaker 1: let people interact either with the websites themselves or with
Speaker 1: one another, or both, and that set the stage for
Speaker 1: stuff like user generated content and social network platforms. So
Speaker 1: this kind of interactivity could be as simple as like
Speaker 1: leaving a message on a comments page, or like a
Speaker 1: review on a commerce site like Amazon, or it could
Speaker 1: be as complicated as uploading a video to a host
Speaker 1: website and attracting people to watch that video. There was
Speaker 1: also the study improved in data transfer speeds. That was
Speaker 1: really important because without that then these more rich experiences
Speaker 1: would take so much time to install and to consume
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't do any good. Like if you're told, oh,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be this great web page, you're just gonna
Speaker 1: to wait forty five minutes for it to load, Chances
Speaker 1: are you're not gonna invest that time for that experience.
Speaker 1: So all of these different elements were critical to making
Speaker 1: the next phase of the Web of possibility. Now, on
Speaker 1: top of all this, Darcy's hype hypothesis included some really
Speaker 1: forward thinking stuff like the fact that we would see
Speaker 1: web connectivity extend beyond desktop computers and laptops, and we
Speaker 1: would see examples like web connected televisions and car dashboards
Speaker 1: and mobile game devices. Uh. Darcy even talked about web
Speaker 1: connected phones. And this was in the era before we
Speaker 1: started being serious smartphones. This is remember the iPhone doesn't
Speaker 1: come out until two thousand seven. So essentially, Darcy was
Speaker 1: predicting a mobile and modular web, complete with advocating for
Speaker 1: websites that would render in such a way as to
Speaker 1: be optimized for the end device. Darcy was saying, that's
Speaker 1: going to be absolutely necessary, that it would be impractical
Speaker 1: and uh and and self defeating if you had a
Speaker 1: one size fits all web layout, because the experience on
Speaker 1: a device like a handheld device would be totally different
Speaker 1: from that from a desktop. And now we have entire
Speaker 1: companies that are based around that idea, right, you have
Speaker 1: companies like squarespace where they create layouts that have uh
Speaker 1: that that capability of sizing and uh emphasizing web pages
Speaker 1: properly depended upon what platform you're using to view the website.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Darcy was for seeing all this. In fact,
Speaker 1: Darcy even Gay was a very early glimpse at the
Speaker 1: concept of the Internet of Things. So again, really really
Speaker 1: great articles. I mean, like I've I've made predictions in
Speaker 1: tech before, I have never been that savvy and that accurate.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's pretty bold. Now in hindsight, of course,
Speaker 1: we can say, yeah, that's where it went. I mean,
Speaker 1: it makes sense that obviously that's where it was going
Speaker 1: to go. But at the time Darcy's predictions weren't necessarily
Speaker 1: rock solid. I mean, one big reason for that is
Speaker 1: ninety nine was at the height of the first hype
Speaker 1: cycle for the web. I'll explain what I mean when
Speaker 1: we come back from these messages all right now. In
Speaker 1: the early early years of the web, it took a
Speaker 1: while for the web to really kind of take off,
Speaker 1: partly because in the earliest days of the web, there
Speaker 1: were regulations in place that prevented the commercial use of
Speaker 1: the inner at Once those were lifted, things would start
Speaker 1: to change. And by the late nineties, pretty much every
Speaker 1: company and every organization out there had become convinced that
Speaker 1: they needed to have a web presence to be competitive
Speaker 1: and effective into the next century. So new companies that
Speaker 1: leveraged the web as a fundamental part of their business
Speaker 1: also popped up right. Not just companies saying how can
Speaker 1: we use the web to do what we do now
Speaker 1: but better? But there were brand new companies that said,
Speaker 1: what can the web? You know, what opportunities do the web?
Speaker 1: Does the web give us to do business? Now? Some
Speaker 1: of those companies really didn't even have business plans per se.
Speaker 1: They might have had a vision of what they might
Speaker 1: be able to provide thanks to the powers of the web,
Speaker 1: but when it came to an actual plan to generate revenue,
Speaker 1: a lot of these companies felt pretty short of that goal.
Speaker 1: It was really a digital gold rush and land grab
Speaker 1: all wrapped up together, and people were pouring billions of
Speaker 1: dollars into it. And as we know now, that trend
Speaker 1: at the time was unsustainable. Uh, it would turn out
Speaker 1: that a lot of those startups that first appeared in
Speaker 1: those early days were incapable of generating enough revenue to
Speaker 1: support themselves. So in some cases, companies were scaling far
Speaker 1: too quickly, and once they scaled to a certain size,
Speaker 1: their expenses were so great that they were spending more
Speaker 1: money than they were bringing in. But in a few
Speaker 1: other cases, and these were high profile ones, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: it it really kind of cast a shadow over the
Speaker 1: web in general. You had these starry eyed web company
Speaker 1: founders who were spending ludicrous amounts of money on lavish
Speaker 1: offices and amenities, and you know, paying themselves this crazy
Speaker 1: salary using investments, and they weren't really using the investment
Speaker 1: money to actually establish a working business, and once the
Speaker 1: money ran out, then the companies were folding. Meanwhile, you
Speaker 1: had employees who were jumping from job to job because
Speaker 1: they were attracted by laughish benefits packages. I would also
Speaker 1: say lavish salaries, but in many cases the compensation largely
Speaker 1: came in the form of stock options or actual shares
Speaker 1: of the company itself. And yes, that can be incredibly valuable.
Speaker 1: If your company hits the big time or if some
Speaker 1: other company decides to acquire it and then you get
Speaker 1: paid out for your equity in the company, that can
Speaker 1: be huge. But if a company falters, well, then there's
Speaker 1: a good chance your stock is not going to be
Speaker 1: worth the paper it's printed on. And unfortunately, that happened
Speaker 1: a lot. So the dot com bubble burst in the
Speaker 1: early two thousand's that was the initial burst. The spring
Speaker 1: of two thousand saw stock prices take a massive hit
Speaker 1: in the tech sector as Japan entered into an economic recession,
Speaker 1: and that kind of precipitated this global response, and there
Speaker 1: was an increased amount of attention paid to how a
Speaker 1: lot of internet companies were burning through their initial investment
Speaker 1: cash way too quickly with no way to generate revenues.
Speaker 1: So unless they were going to get regular injections of
Speaker 1: investment cash. They just couldn't stick around because there was
Speaker 1: there was nothing to pay for operations. Then the following year,
Speaker 1: the terrorist attacks in the United States on September eleven,
Speaker 1: two thousand one, that caused another big drop in the
Speaker 1: stock market, and at that point, companies that were already
Speaker 1: kind of on the brink folded and it was incredibly bleak.
Speaker 1: But some companies were able to weather the storms. So
Speaker 1: companies like Amazon made it through just barely. And I've
Speaker 1: talked about that story in a previous episode of Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: Um I believe it might have been owned business on
Speaker 1: the brink, but either way, amazon survival of the dot
Speaker 1: com bubble was really more down to luck than anything else.
Speaker 1: eBay was another site that made it through the dot
Speaker 1: com bubble, and of course there were others. Now flash
Speaker 1: forward to two thousand four, the tech industry was kind
Speaker 1: of on the road to recovery. There were people who
Speaker 1: are actually kind of eager to look ahead at this point,
Speaker 1: Like there was a lot of damage control and triage
Speaker 1: in the wake of the dot com bubble burst. But
Speaker 1: by two thousand four we had kind of rounded the corner.
Speaker 1: On that, and that's when a media company called O'Reilly,
Speaker 1: founded by Tim O'Reilly, planned a conference with the name
Speaker 1: the Web two point oh Conference. And this is really
Speaker 1: where the term web two point oh became famous. So again,
Speaker 1: Darcy had invented the phrase five years earlier, but it
Speaker 1: was this conference in two thousand four where it really
Speaker 1: became a buzzword. And I would argue that web two
Speaker 1: point oh took on an additional meaning at this conference,
Speaker 1: and that would be that the strategies that some companies
Speaker 1: like Amazon had been using that helped or at least
Speaker 1: appeared to help get them through the dot com bubble
Speaker 1: burst and survive were ones that related to web two
Speaker 1: point oh. So the implication I got was that features
Speaker 1: like dynamic elements and support for user generated content, the
Speaker 1: incorporation of other interactive elements, and the use of web
Speaker 1: based media were what set the survivors of the dot
Speaker 1: com bubble burst apart from other companies that failed to
Speaker 1: attract a lot of traffic and make it through. And
Speaker 1: there's definitely some truth to that. I mean, I sometimes
Speaker 1: get the feeling the message was, Hey, those companies that
Speaker 1: didn't make it through the dot com bubble we're holding
Speaker 1: too tightly onto the old Web one point oh way,
Speaker 1: but that's not necessarily true. There were companies that were
Speaker 1: part of the mini that folded that had Web two
Speaker 1: point oh features to them. So you couldn't just point
Speaker 1: to this and say if you were Web one point oh,
Speaker 1: you failed, because not all Web one point oh sites
Speaker 1: went away, and if you were Web two point oh,
Speaker 1: you survived because not all those were true either. Now
Speaker 1: I also admit that this could be just my own
Speaker 1: misinterpretation of the messaging here. It just felt like that
Speaker 1: was kind of what the point was that like, in
Speaker 1: order to really thrive, you need to be Web two
Speaker 1: point oh. But you know, you can get pretty cynical
Speaker 1: when you sift through a lot of marketing buzz speaks,
Speaker 1: So that might just be my own, you know, me
Speaker 1: bringing baggage to it. Anyway, this is where Web two
Speaker 1: point oh really took off as a definition, and you
Speaker 1: can definitely see how stuff like dynamic elements and incorporation
Speaker 1: of media and social interactivity and all those sort of
Speaker 1: things have become the underpinnings for much of the Web today,
Speaker 1: from social networking sites to gaming to news to commerce.
Speaker 1: It's pretty comment to encounters some or even all of
Speaker 1: these features. So Darcy was on point. I'm telling you
Speaker 1: now when it comes to Web three or Web three
Speaker 1: point oh, that definition depends upon whom you're talking to. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's the Tim burners Leave version of Web three point oh.
Speaker 1: He's again the guy who invented the web, and his
Speaker 1: vision of Web three point oh is a machine readable web,
Speaker 1: or the so called semantic web. With the semantic web,
Speaker 1: each person's experience would be customized, you know, tailored if
Speaker 1: you will, to their own behaviors and needs. And we
Speaker 1: actually see elements of this already taking form, and things
Speaker 1: like recommendation engines where on shopping sites, media sites, or
Speaker 1: social networking sites start giving you recommended things to look at. However,
Speaker 1: extend that sort of thing to your total experience on
Speaker 1: the web and you get closer to what Tim berners
Speaker 1: Lee vision was, and it would be a web that
Speaker 1: would respond instantly to your needs and provide you with
Speaker 1: the results you want, assuming it was working properly. And
Speaker 1: then there's the other definition, the more recent one, which
Speaker 1: dates to you know, around two thousand fourteen or so,
Speaker 1: and to be fair, most people don't actually refer to
Speaker 1: it as Web three point oh. They call it just
Speaker 1: Web three with no space between the B and web
Speaker 1: and the numeral three. This version isn't about the semantic web.
Speaker 1: It's more about relying on blockchain technology to underlie a
Speaker 1: future version of the web, so that the web would
Speaker 1: actually be built on top of blockchain. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: the future that crypto enthusiasts and n f T fans
Speaker 1: really get excited about, and one in which there would
Speaker 1: be like a token based economy and a decent trualized
Speaker 1: approach to the web, at least in theory. But as
Speaker 1: I said, I'll have to do a full episode about
Speaker 1: what Web three really means and what it might really
Speaker 1: look like in the future, and question about is it
Speaker 1: truly decentralized or not spoiler alert, I am a skeptic.
Speaker 1: But for now, that's a quick refresher on what Web
Speaker 1: one point oh, which really wasn't defined until that era
Speaker 1: was coming to an end, and Web two point oh
Speaker 1: actually are and again in the future I'll tackle Web
Speaker 1: three now. If you have suggestions for topics I should
Speaker 1: tackle on tech stuff, let me know on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show is text Stuff hs W. I
Speaker 1: look forward to hearing from you, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I heart
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