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A Web Without Numbers

At first, there was just the web1. Time passed, new tech and techniques were added and folks started calling it "Web 2.0".

Well, business folks started calling it "Web 2.0". My guess is if you'd asked the average internet user they wouldn't have even heard the term. Much less, used it. It was a tech industry "re-brand". Something to fire off a zillion "business initiatives".

The natural successor was "Web 3.0". A branding term centered around crypto currencies and NFTs. As before, I wonder how many folks who weren't invoved in the industry used the term2.

What if we stopped using numbers to define the web? What if it was just "the web" as it was at the start? What if we focued more on what folks were doing on it than trying to brand it?

What if we ignored business rebrandings and went back to just working and playing on the web? Let historians decided what to call the shifts.

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Footnotes

1 ⤴

Okay, sure. You could argue that at first there was the internet. Or, you could back up to ARPANET. Or, whatever. You can pick whatever epoch you want, but we're going with when Tim Berners-Lee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee kicked off the web with HTML, URLs and HTTP.

2 ⤴

Frankly, probably lots more folks heard about Web 3.0 becuase there was such a push behind crypto and NFTs. And, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that those technologies aren't what I'd call web technologies. They are "internet" technologs, but the web for me will always be the World Wide Web which is made of HTML, URLs, and HTTP.