Аннотация: Перевод статьи "Afternet. Этапы развития Internet'a" 2019 года - https://samlib.ru/a/angorskij_a_a/afternet.shtml /// This is a translation of the 2019 article by Andrey A. Angorsky
My personal view of the history of the Internet’s development (WWW) and a look toward the future. By no means a forecast.
To begin with, let us consider those stages in the history of the Internet (also referred to as the Network) that can be regarded as already completed.
The zero stage consisted merely of attempts to transmit signals over a distance, using various methods.
Internet 1.0 (Web 1.0)
was, to one degree or another, a proliferation of “bulletin boards” (or BBS — Bulletin Board Systems).
Internet 2.0 (Web 2.0)
already represents information flows (there are many examples; in terms of hardware, these include mobile devices; in terms of software — applications, RSS streams and feeds, everything that enables near-instant sharing and live communication).
At present, we are somewhere between the Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 stages, since the third stage cannot yet be considered fully realized, as it is
Internet 3.0 (Web 3.0)
the “Network’s view of itself” — the processing of information that was previously hard to even imagine, and for which the means of processing did not formerly exist. An element of novelty is already present here, yet in essence it is still the same familiar information. For Web 3.0, the term “Internet of Things” is also sometimes used.
In the future, we will most likely face a fundamentally new stage.
Web 4.0
appears to involve the breakdown of the Network as we know it, a transition into other domains of information processing (both in the physical sense of the word and in the algorithmic one; a departure from dialectical foundations, from binary logic), the generation of fundamentally new information, and the creation of a different informational field.
This is, of course, neither a rigorous analysis of the Network’s history nor, all the more so, a forecast. Therefore, I expect — and encourage — a critical attitude toward this article.