At one point in our lives, we have considered deleting our social media accounts or tried finding another alternative to Google. We've all gone thru that but because only a few companies own the net's key services, then there's not much we can do but transact and interact thru them.
But what if we are given a way to change this via a third generation of web technology? There has been much talk about this on and offline. If you dive further, the term, DWeb will come up. It is a new decentralized version of cyberspace, promises to enable better user control, more competition between internet firms and less dominance by the large corporations. But there are still serious questions over whether it's possible - or even desirable.
The first generation of the web created by Sir Tim Berners Lee was mostly a passive, "read-only" web with minimal interaction between users, wherein most of us were merely recipients of the information. It lasted from 1989 to 2005. Then came Web 2.0, a "read-write web" which let users create and share more of their own content, increasing participation and collaboration.
Then comes Web 3.0. In an article written by Edina Harbinja in Aston University and Vasileios Karagiannopoulos and the University of Portsmouth, they were able to describe in detail its workings. In theory, 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. Besides this, it will also be a decentralized web moving us away from relying so heavily on a few companies, technologies and a relatively small amount of internet infrastructure.
Currently, our computers use HyperText Transfer Protocol in the form of web addresses to find information stored at a fixed location, usually on a single server. On the other hand, the DWeb will find information based on content which would allow data to be stored in several places at once, this will then involve peer-to-peer connectivity and all these eventually leading to decentralization.
In principle, this would also better protect users from private and government surveillance as data would no longer be stored in a way that was easy for third parties to access. This actually harks back to the original philosophy behind the internet, which was first created to decentralize US communications during the Cold War to make them less vulnerable to attack.
Some of the technologies that could make the DWeb possible are already being developed. For example, the Databox Project (proposed by the Royal Academy of Engineering) 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 (created by Tamas Kocsis) is an alternative to the existing web, where websites are hosted by a network of participating computers instead of a centralized 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 decentralized network of computers using a "blockchain" public ledger as its database and payment system.
However, this technology is still in its early stages and there are several concerns that are being widely debated. Foremost is the legal and regulatory risk involved. Given the lack of central control in a decentralized web, policing cybercrime will be even more difficult and thus will rely on users taking more initiative and responsibility for their data and their online interactions.
The DWeb certainly has its benefits and the potential to give ordinary internet users more power. But it would require some major shifts in how we perceive the web and our place in it. Whether its benefits will be sufficient to drive enough users away from the tech giants to make it viable remains to be seen. However, with governments becoming keen to increase regulation of the internet, the DWeb might actually offer a more liberal alternative in the long run.
