Post by g***@cyberdude.comI heard that Web 3.0 is "peer to peer"
Oh dear God*.
Post by g***@cyberdude.comwhat does that MEAN, exactly?
To me, not much. Particularly from an end user technology point of view.
"Web 1.0" was / is your basic static pages. IMHO "Web 2.0" was most
profoundly signified by AJAX (read: JavaScript's XMLHttpRequest) and
dynamically changing a web page without needing to do a new page load.
To me, Web 1.0 and 2.0 were significant technological differences in
what was done in the end user's web browser.
"Web 3.0" seems to be more about /where/ the information comes from that
is used by AJAX (Web 2.0). As such, I don't view this as a
technological evolution.
To put it more succinctly, I don't think there will be any discernible
differences in a Web 2.0 and 3.0 AJAX application /other/ than /where/
the information comes from.
I think Web 3.0 is probably going to be more of a marketing term than a
technological term.
One thing that might be a defining factor of Web 3.0 is the use of what
is called the Semantic Web and how that can enable site to site
communications. Enabling this communications will allow sites to
understand / read / benefit / use each other's information.
Perhaps an example may help.
1) I'm sending this reply today, the 29th of March, 2020.
2) Today's date is Mar 29 '20.
3) I am publishing a reply to your inquiry on the 29thd day of March of
the 2000 and 20s year of our lord.
4) 2020-03-29
5) Sun, 29 Mar 2020
6) 158550....
All of these are the date. None of them are very interchangeable.
Semantic markup of this information might be something like this:
A) <date><year>2020</year><month>03</month><day>29</day></date>
The /critical/ parts of that are:
· Tagging to indicate that this data is a date. <date>…</date>
· Tagging the year. <year>…</year>
· Tagging the month. <month>…</month>
· Tagging the day of the month. <day>…</day>
The importance of this is to make it easier for a computer program to
parse a body of text, e.g. this reply, and identify things that are
marked / published / defined as dates.
Why does this matter? Why can't we determine based on textual patterns?
— I'm glad that you asked.
2020-03-04
Is that the 4th of March or the 3rd of April?
Or is it bin number 2020 on isle 3 of warehouse 4?
Or is it a math problem that should result in 2013, assuming decimal
(base 10)?
So, to come back to web 3.0.
I think — hope — that more and more web pages are going to start
publishing information; like dates, names, citations, titles, etc., in
some sort of semantic mark up. Doing so will allow computers to more
easily recognize information for what it is. This means that computers
can more accurately search things and return better results.
The following three questions have decidedly different answers, yet they
use the same name / search object:
1) All web pages with the name "Grant Taylor" on them.
2) All web pages that are articles / posts / replies that "Grant
Taylor" wrote.
3) All web pages that are articles / posts / replies in response to
something that "Grant Taylor" wrote.
#1 is a superset of #2 and #3.
With the semantic web, it will be much easier to differentiate between
#2 and #3.
Do you see the theme that all of this is how the information is
published? And has nothing to do with technologies on the client side? ;-)
Post by g***@cyberdude.comDoes this remove the need for data centers?
/Absolutely/ *NOT*!!!
The data still has to be published /somewhere/. That /somewhere/ is
almost always going to be a data center.
Have you noticed how businesses that have gone paperless have more paper
than they did before they supposedly went paperless? }:-) This is a
side effect of the increased efficiency brought on by paperless
technologies.
Let's say that a business went from 100% paper to 60% paperless and 40%
paper. But in doing so they are 4 times as efficient and 3 times as
productive. So you've got 3 × 60% paperless (180%) and 3 × 40% paper
(120%) = 300% productivity. But notice that the paper went up from 100%
to 120%. Play with the numbers.
Post by g***@cyberdude.comi.e. there is no webSERVER any more?
Warning: Double Negative.
Nope (-) "no (-) web server" ≈ "web server"
Which make sense. Because /something/ needs to serve the content.
Currently that's web servers. Web servers will be the thing that
continues to do so for the foreseeable future.
Sure, web servers may eventually be supplanted by a different type of
server. But I don't think that will be any time soon. Even then, there
are still servers, just of a different technology.
Post by g***@cyberdude.comHow does this "libp2p" thing work?
I'm not overly familiar with libp2p. My understanding is that it's a
library that enables traditional p2p networks; BitTorrent, ToR, etc.
Even these technologies simply enable communications to a distant
/server/ that is /somewhere/ on the Internet.
Note that the /server/ still exists.
Post by g***@cyberdude.comHow does it FIND "the next node" for whatever it's trying to do?
Boot strapping is it's own problem. Or rather trying to have something
without boot strapping is the problem. Accepting that you need
/something/ to boot strap or help find things and not trying to fight it
is tremendously helpful.
Post by g***@cyberdude.comAnd...is a working Web 3.0 browser actually *out*?
Seeing as how everything I've seen, and described, is how information is
published, and how nothing is really different /client/ side, sure. I'd
expect the typical big players to have no problem using Web 2.0 /client/
technology to properly render information published to Web 3.0 standards
using the same /server/ technology that enabled Web 1.0. }:-)
Post by g***@cyberdude.comRemember, I'm totally New to all this (as are we all, I guess....) :)
You're asking good but dangerous questions. Good as in they are wrapped
around worthwhile inquisitions. Though the exact words and wording may
be somewhat … uninformed. Bad in that if you keep asking questions like
these, you will be on your way to becoming an old curmudgeon like me who
looks at things like Web 3.0 and decides that it's mostly the same as
Web 2.0 from a client technology point of view.
Point of order: From an information sharing point of view, Web 3.0 is
extremely important. Much like the printing press, and common written
languages before that.
Historians will appreciate Web 3.0 much more than technologists will.
Search engines will REALLY appreciate Web 3.0 as it will make it damn
near trivial to extract actionable information out of pages being indexed.
Do you see why I said "Oh dear God*."?
You're welcome.
* Substitute your deity of choice.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die