Catching Up to Crypto

CHAPTER 17Web3 and the Metaverse

The internet has gone through a few different stages in its development since reaching mainstream markets in the 1990s. It started with simple web pages that displayed text, photos, and sometimes videos. Designing web pages required some level of technical skill, but it was something that anyone could try. This is how the internet was for over a decade, with a small number of highly skilled content creators and a much larger number of internet consumers. Researchers will often call this the “Web 1.0” era of the internet. Over the years, it slowly became easier to create content online. Social media platforms like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allowed anyone to distribute their own content on the internet, even if they didn't know how to code or build a website. Around the time these platforms were rising to prominence, there was a series of tech conferences called the Web 2.0 Summits, which were hosted by the tech publisher O'Reilly Media. These summits and the Web 2.0 branding were intended to illustrate how the internet was going through an important transformation.¹

The term “Web 2.0” was first coined in 1999 by the author and programmer Darcy DiNucci, but it didn't really catch on until the first O'Reilly Web 2.0 Summit in 2004. After the first summit, “Web 2.0” quickly caught on as a popular way to describe the new social media era of the internet. Soon enough social media was just a regular part of life and it no longer needed ...