The Arrival of the Web 3.0

What is Web 3.0? That’s a good question! And I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to answer it in this essay. Yet, I’ll try my very best to get closer to the answer. There exist several definitions of Web 3.0, none of which can be considered definite. A very general one describes it as “an extension of Web 2.0,” which is of limited helpfulness. Also, I’ve heard some call the Semantic Web “Web 3.0,” while Nova Spivack as well as Tim Berners-Lee see it only as a part of the latter. Interestingly, what has been neglected in most discussions about Web 3.0 so far are augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR), or 3D in general. Seems like this could be worth a closer look. Although both, AR and VR have been connected to Web 3.0 separately, they rather have to be seen as an integral part of the overall concept, in addition to the Semantic Web. In the following, I describe why 3D — and AR/VR in particular — are beyond the Web 2.0, why current trends in web technology show that we are entering the Web 3.0 at high speed right now, and what will change for us — the designers, developers, architects etc.

Where are we coming from?

To be able to put Web 3.0 in relation to what we’ve seen so far, let’s have a brief look at the beginnings first.

Web 1.0

What is now called the “Web 1.0” in retrospect is what we programmed 15 or 20 years ago, mostly using nothing more than plain HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript (or Microsoft FrontPage). There were no Ajax, no Facebook, and no comment sections…