Aug 8, 2022

Web3 Isn't The Next Big Thing

Web3 is touted to be the next big thing of the Internet with block chains and de-centralised Internet, but it is not the next epoch of the Internet for the following reasons:

• Decentralised infrastructure is more sophisticated than its centralised counterpart. Therefore, the use of web3 requires some understanding of technology (or technical know how). But the larger population of Internet users is not extremely digitally literate. For this reason, the adoption of web3 in lieu of web2 is doubtful.
• Communication in a decentralisation network worsens the concern of privacy as explained here, thus inhibiting the adoption of web3.
• Decentralised and distributed databases like the block chain duplicates data among peers, thus becoming a storage liability for most peers in the network, forcing them to either stop hosting the block chain or increase their storage capacity. In the former case, the larger the block chain grows, the lesser the number of hosting grows, thus neutralising the very benefit of decentralisation. This makes it easier to tamper the block chain. The latter case, on the other hand, will increase the demand on storage resources. This too, will inhibit the adoption of decentralised systems.

Web1, which was focused on information sharing over CRUD actions, was never perfect (some issues are listed below). Web2 didn't make the improvements but ventured into single page web apps. Web3 must have at least considered fixing these imperfections before delving into de-centralised infrastructures. Whatever web number we live in, fundamental issues pertaining to web1, such as those listed below must be addressed.

• We have a method to divide a web page into multiple columns, but we do not have a method to divide them into multiple columns per fold allowing us to read every column in a fold before scrolling down to the next fold (like per page in a word processor).
• There is no semantic element for numbered headings. Numbered headings have meaning to it, therefore they require semantic entries; not CSS workarounds.
• There is no semantic element to number paragraphs, which is a standard way to display information.
• There is no semantic element for title case that capitalises the first letter of certain words in a sentence. text-transform: uppercase; capitalises all words.
• There is no semantic element for title heading. We currently use h1 for the title, which is inaccurate.
• There is no semantic to denote special words that do not need to be emphasised. For instance, consider this sentence, "The four castes of ancient Indian societies were four varnas, not four jaatis." These italicised words are Indian words that need to be written as it is. To cue that it is a foreign word, the norm is to italicise the word, which can be achieved semantically only using the <em> tag. But these words are not to be emphasised in the true meaning of the <em> tag. Only the foreign nature of these words is emphasised, not its meaning. We lack a semantic tag for this.