In Perspective | Metaverse and the many plays for the future of the Web

A movement by communities of developers and venture capitalists are now focussing on Web 3.0. At present, it does not have a clear definition. But, it draws from the principles of the distributed ledger technologies

When Mark Zuckerberg renamed his 17-year-old company from Facebook to Meta, he billed it as a move to embrace a new paradigm in the internet — the metaverse. The future is virtual and it will bring people together to work, play, study, and create in a way never before, he proclaimed, peppering a near 80-minute presentation with colourful animation of how people in different cities can come together in a digital room, represented as any appearance they chose.

The metaverse in essence is one powerful company’s play for what the future of the World Wide Web could look like. Facebook, or now Meta, has a readymade ecosystem of social media users (Instagram, Facebook) and communication users (WhatsApp), as well as a small but significant suite of products under Oculus (AFP)

Zuckerberg’s announcements are a timely reminder that technologies are changing, and many see a new inflection point on the horizon, powered by leaps in hardware development that have allowed new applications of computing power to be mainstreamed, such as Artificial Intelligence, digital currencies and virtual reality gaming.

The metaverse in essence is one powerful company’s play for what the future of the World Wide Web could look like. Facebook, or now Meta, has a readymade ecosystem of social media users (Instagram, Facebook) and communication users (WhatsApp), as well as a small but significant suite of products under Oculus.

The leaders of Microsoft and Google too have given some hints of where they see the future of technology, the Internet and the World Wide Web: In Google’s case, chief executive Sundar Pichai has signalled a larger embracing of AI technologies, as has Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. For both of them, AI is meant to power the next phase of growth for their companies’ products, digital as well as hardware.

All three are behemoths working with big data that is significantly distinct from each other: Facebook has largely served individuals, Microsoft has vast enterprise-level business, and Google straddles a bit of both worlds. Data and userbase are some of the biggest foundational assets in creating new technologies, which places these companies at a significant advantage in influencing the future.

But there is a growing movement that imagines the future differently. To understand that, it is important to briefly look back at its evolution and why, in particular, there is a distinction between the Internet and the World Wide Web.

The net and the web

The internet is the network of networks; its evolution refers to improvement in bandwidth, reach, and the hardware and hardware-adjacent features. Its history goes further back than the origin of the World Wide Web, or simply – the Web, which is the information system that sits atop the Internet.

The information ecosystem is characterised by what are known as protocols and applications. Its first iteration, invented by Sir Tim Berners Lee in 1989, had mostly static, read-only websites and chat boards.

Then came Web 2.0 sometime in the early 2000s, when dynamic and interactive web services became popular – think MySpace. Information became more democratic and accessible and private companies with successful architecture, design and product plans grew to become the Facebooks, Twitters, Spotifys and Ubers of today –unlocking new economic opportunities and communication cultures.

Web 3.0?

A movement by communities of developers and venture capitalists are now focussing on Web 3.0. At present, it does not have a very clear definition. But, at the risk of over-simplifying, it draws from the principles of the distributed ledger technologies (DLT) that underpin modern cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

The core distinction between Web 3.0 has more to do with protocols and architecture on which consumer-facing applications like the metaverse may someday be based. Google’s AI, Microsoft’s cloud services, and Facebook’s metaverse ecosystem could exist within its framework, or outside it – there are several futures that could pan out.

The reason why the Web 3.0 movement is noteworthy is how it envisions the future: decentralised. Bitcoin, for instance, is decentralised and, for good or bad, it has enforced simple, effective rules for how a currency should work without any central regulator. In history, nothing of this scale has been this transparent and autonomous.

Web 3.0, its proponents say, aims to replicate this in the information ecosystem of the Internet by resolving one of the most significant challenges of interconnected systems — establishing trust. Here, trust does not refer to individuals but the data.

For instance, the only way for you to establish the veracity of the words you read are by trusting that your internet service provider is legitimately showing you a webpage of the Hindustan Times, and the HT website is legitimately reproducing the words this author wrote. If you reached this piece via Twitter or Facebook, the trust then also involves the fact that those companies legitimately linked to the piece this was intended to be.

DLTs, and the Web 3.0 that could be built using it, aim to make trust autonomous and decentralised. In the words of Gavin Wood, the co-founder of Ethereum and one of the key people in the Web3 foundation, Web 3.0 “technologies give the user strong and verifiable guarantees about the information they are receiving, what information they are giving away, and what they are paying and what they are receiving in return.”

“By empowering users to act for themselves within low-barrier markets, we can ensure censorship and monopolisation have fewer places to hide. Consider Web 3.0 to be an executable Magna Carta — the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.”

Will it succeed?

At its core, the goal of decentralisation harks back to the early visions of the Internet, summarised most famously by the Declaration of the Independence of the Cyberspace. In the 25 years since, that vision has fallen apart and the Internet, in the words of Wood, is dominated by “entrenched interests controlling much of our digital lifestyles, and interests often aligned between lawmakers, government and technology monopolists”.

The cynicism notwithstanding, Wood is right. Modern technology is dominated by dominant influencers of technology and, as the digital increasingly influences the physical, nation-states are bringing in regulations and rules. Their necessity and correctness are a matter of a different debate.

Web 3.0’s proponents also find agreement with a growing opinion that the power of Big Tech should be broken up. In that sense, decentralisation could be the answer. But is it too utopic? Bitcoin, Ethereum and NFTs (non-fungible tokens, explained here) exist today and have grown in strength and acceptability.

Whether similar concepts shape a larger future of technology and the Internet will depend on how these efforts pan out, and the amount of support or resistance that people, developers, nation-states, and private enterprises put up.

The views expressed are personal