[2023 Prediction #3] Web 3.0 is dead. Long Live Web 4.0!

-- reposting blog article in its new home --

I am sure we’ve all heard of phrases like:

“when it clicks, it actually clicks..”

“When it rains, it pours ..”

Loosely in Physics, this phenomenon is called “resonance”

In the more recent tech & startup terms, this phenomenon is called “Product Market Fit” — the great PMF !

Barely 6 months ago, back in Oct 2022, the term ChatGPT or Generative AI was an arcade keyword or topic. As I write this, the Google Trends score is 100, representing “peak” or “highest” score for trending topics.

If this was not enough, we have had billions of dollars being invested, affected due to hot AI revolution that is almost pervasive now. From Microsoft’s $10 Billion investment / partnership with Open AI company to Google’s $100 Billion stock crash due to failed AI Demo .. and on & on.. we can go on!

The swift, unprecedented general adoption of AI and leveraging its Power in real world applications is something pleasantly un-imaginable for even the geek of geeks in the tech / startup worlds.

Web 3.0:

From wikipedia:

The term “Web3” was coined in 2014 by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, and the idea gained interest in 2021 from cryptocurrency enthusiasts, large technology companies, and venture capital firms.

Decentralization is one of the core tenet of Web 3.0. In Web 2.0, data / information is stored at a fixed location, generally on a single server or one business entity. With Web 3.0, because information would be found based on its content, it could be stored in multiple locations simultaneously and hence be decentralized. This would break down the massive databases currently held by internet giants like FB /Meta and Google and would hand greater control to users.

In order to enable “decentralization” and still be able to maintain integrity of data, privacy and all the shebang, the protocol needs “trustless”, “permissionless” and more like “peer-to-peer”. The new Web 3.0 differed greatly with the its older sibling of “peer-to-peer” networks (a.k.a Napster) with the underlying technology powering Web 3.0 , that is — Blockchain!

As I mentioned in my earlier blog post, Blockchain is great technology that just doesn’t have a viable use case, IMHO! Blockchain is so complex and perplexing even for the best of geeks. Any technology or process that is complex to use will be relegated to novelty and that of used for only academic purposes. IMHO blockchain in one such thing.

Blockchain gained super importance during the pandemic due to the meteoric rise of Cryptocurrencies, which as I had mentioned in my earlier blog post — is being relegated to novelty. NFT & Web 3.0 gained popularity as a tributary or side effect of crypto currency and blockchain popularity , with no real meat into it.

I predict that Web 3.0 companies — NFTs, Blockchain Gaming, and etc — will soon be relegated to novelty.

Web 4.0:

I am thinking and defining that - AI Generated Content by regular users to sift through and enrich the information on the Internet and use them to solve tangible real world needs & use cases is the age of Web 4.0

2023 kickstarted with a bang for the techies and geeks and entrepreneurs with the meteoric rise in popularity of AI, powered by inventions such as Chat GPT, Generative Image Models, and etc.

The time taken for Chat GPT to be acquiring 1 Million users is just 5 days when compared to the most popular of social media companies like Instagram, FB and other which took many months to acquire 1 Million users.

The power of AI and productization of AI by the Open AI company has been so good that , the “rocket science” par complex AI has been adopted by regular people so quickly.

AI products have clicked the resonance chord with the mass that we are already seeing tons of data generated by common users — both text and image and soon perhaps videos — with the help of the AI models.

The above office picture is not real! This is AI generated office design inspired by the design styles of Taj Mahal and modern amenities. This was released by Microsoft recently

Lawyers are using Chat GPT and more AI tools as Copilot for helping out reduce parking tickets court cases

GitHub is using AI Copilot to assist and help programmers write better code

Khan Academy has started using Chat GPT-4 to assist students to learn fundamental math & science concepts as copilot

Clearly the opportunities are limitless. 

The future to AI generated content and thus Web 4.0 looks shining bright !