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Evolution of World Wide Web: Journey From Web 1.0 to Web 4.0

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IJCST Vol. 6, Issue 1, Jan - March 2015 ISSN : 0976-8491 (Online) | ISSN : 2229-4333 (Print)

Evolution of World Wide Web: Journey From

Web 1.0 to Web 4.0
1
Pranay Kujur, 2Bijoy Chhetri
1,2
Dept. of Computer Science and Engg. Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology, India

Abstract III. Web 1.0

The fast lane toward the development of Web is coined to be as Web 1.0 was first implementation of the web and it lasted from
an outright phenomenon in the today’s society with incorporated 1989 to 2005. It was define as web of information connections.
use of modern innovative technology and redefining the way of According to the innovator of World Wide Web, Tim Berners-
organizing, communicating and collaborating with individual which Lee considers the Web as “read-only” Web [1]. It provides very
in terms lead us to mixture of spectacular successes and failures. little interaction where consumer can exchange the information
The purpose of this paper is to understand and conceptualize the together but it was not possible to interact with the website. The
evolution of Web from the scratch to the upcoming trends in the role of the web was very passive in nature.
field of Web Technology. Web 1.0 was referred as the first generation of World Wide Web
which was basically defined as
Keywords "It is an information space in which the items of interest referred
Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web 4.0, characteristics, Limitation, to as resources are identified by global identifier called as Uniform
Architecture. Resources Identifiers (URIs)".
First generation Web was era static pagesand content delivery
I. Introduction purpose only. In other words, the
In today’s era Web Technology can be easily defined by the user early web allowed us to search for information and read it.
in different descriptive way. But matter in fact many user are quite There was very little in the way of user interaction or content
unknown to the information that from where the WWW was coined contribution.
first. As this paper state the evolution of Web so it is important to
initiate the story from the beginning where it was stated first. A. Charateristics
Web was introduced by Tim Burners-Lee inlate 1989 [9-10]. He Web 1.0 Technologies includes core web protocols: HTML, HTTP
view of the capabilities of the World Wide Web was expressed by and URI. The major characteristics of Web 1.0 are as follow:
three innovations, typically associated withthree phases: namely, 1. They have read only content.
the Web of documents (Web 1.0), the Webof people (Web 2.0) and 2. Establish an online presence and make their information
the Web of data (the still-to-be-realisedWeb 3.0) [11].Through its available to anyone at any time.
life cycle, the World Wide Web has been through various phases 3. It includes static web pages and use basic Hypertext Mark-
of development. Going by the trend of constantevolution, the Web up Language.
is now slowly but surely transiting to more data centric phase in
the context of Web version 3.0 [7]. B. Limitation
This paper is structured in such a way that, classifying obtaining The major limitations of Web 1.0 are as follow:
nature of Web 1.0 and projecting prospective characteristics of 1. The Web 1.0 pages can only be understood by humans (web
Web 2.0with added different dimensions of the Web 3.0 semantic readers) they do not have machine compatible content.
frameworks, whilst its scope is directed to explore a stronger 2. The web master is solely responsible for updating users and
appreciation into architectural foundations of the next generation managing the content of website.
of Web 4.0 of Web applications. This paper would attempt to 3. Lack of Dynamic representation i.e., to acquire only static
build a user centric view of the composition of featuresthatwould information, no web console were available to performing
be expected to be incorporated in future generations of Web dynamic events.
technology. In sum, the paperpresents a holistic view of the World
Wide Web. IV. Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is the second generation of web. It was defined by Dale
II. World Wide Web Dougherty in 2004 as a read-write web [1].The concept began with
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext a conference brainstorming session between O’Reillyand Media
documents accessed via the Internet [21]. With a web browser, one live International. The technologies ofweb 2.0 allow assembling
can view web pages thatmay contain text, images, videos, andother and managing large global crowds with common interests in social
multimedia and navigate between them via hyperlinks.On March interactions.
12, 1989,Tim Berners- Lee, a British computer scientist and former Tim O’Reilly defines web 2.0 on his websiteas follows [8]: “Web
CERN employee, wrote aproposal for what would eventually 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by
become the World Wide Web [1]. The 1989 proposal was meant for the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand
a more effective CERN communication system but Berners- Lee the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those
eventually realised the concept could be implementedthroughout rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to
the world.Berners- Lee and Belgian computer scientist Robert get better the more people use them.”
Cailliau proposed in 1990 to use hypertext “to link and access Web 2.0 facilitates major properties like participatory,
information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user collaborative, and distributed practices which enable formal
can browse atwill” [22]. In these ways the first web service was and in-formal spheres ofdaily activities on going on web. In
designed and tested and latterly confined as Word Wide Web. other terms it resemble major distinct characteristics of Web 2.0

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include “relationship” technologies, participatory media and a B. Limitation

social digital technology which in term can also defined as the Sometimes it may happen that if the new technology meets
wisdom web. People-centric web and participative web is taken expectations of the mass user at large, there may be a chance that
into concern and which facilities readingand writing on the web these technologies may face lot of consequences from external
which makes the web transaction bi-directional. environment which may supress or limit the flow of technology
Web 2.0 is a web as a platform where users can leave many of in presenting results which might not be feasible andmay lead to
thecontrols they have used in web 2.0. In other words, the user degrade the performance of the technology as a whole.
of web2.0 has more interaction with less control. Web 2.0 is not 1. Constant iteration cycle of Change and Updates to services
only a new version of web 1.0 but it also implies to flexible web [11].
design, creative reuse, updates, collaborative content creation and 2. Ethical issues concerning build and usage of Web 2.0 [11].
modification in web 2.0 that should be considered as one of the 3. Interconnectivity and knowledge sharing between platforms
outstanding feature of the web 2.0 is to support collaborationand across community boundaries are still limited [12] [15].
to help gather collective intelligence rather Web 1.0.
V. Web 3.0
Web 3.0 is one of modern and evolutionary topics associated with
the following initiatives of Web 2.0. Web 3.0 was first coined by
John Markoff of the New York Times and he suggested web 3.0
as third generation of the web in 2006 [18]. Web 3.0 can be also
stated as “executable Web”. The basic idea of web 3.0 is to define
structure data and link them in order to more effective discovery,
automation, integration, and reuse across various applications
[6].It is able toimprove data management, support accessibility
of mobile internet, simulate creativity and innovation, encourage
factor of globalization phenomena, enhance customers’ satisfaction
and help toorganize collaboration in social web.
Web 3.0 is also known as semantic web. Semantic web was thought
up by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web [1].
There is a dedicated team at the World Wide Web consortium
(W3C) working to improve, extend and standardize the system,
languages, publications and toolshave already been developed
[3].Web 3.0 is a web where the concept of website or webpage
disappears, where data isn’t owned butinstead shared, where
services show different views for the same web or the same data.
Thoseservices can be applications (like browsers, virtual worlds
or anything else), devices or other, andhave to be focused on
Fig. 1: Comparison Web1.0 & Web 2.0 [28] context and personalization, and both will be reached by using
verticalsearch [13].
A. Charateristics Web3.0 supports world wide database and web oriented architecture
Web 2.0 is instead a label coined by Tim O’Reilly and associates to which in earlier stage was described as a web of document. It
reference the transition of the World Wide Web to a new phase of deals mainly with static HTML documents, but dynamically
use and service development [17]. The categorization can be used rendered pages and alternative formats should follow the same
to elaborate on the understanding of Web 2.0 achieved through conceptual layout standards whenever possible and links are
varied definitions. between documents or part of them.The web of documents was
designed for humanConsumption in which primary objects are
1. Technology Centric Definition documents and links are between documents (or parts of them).
Web has become a platform with software above the level of a Semantics of content and links are implicit and the degree of
single device. Technology that is associated with blogs, wikis, structure between objects is fairly low [19]. Fig. 2 represents the
podcasts, RSS feeds etc. structure of web of documents in simple [19].

2. Business Centric Definitions

A way of architecting software and businesses.The business
revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to internet
as platform and an attempt to understand the rulesfor success on
that of new platform.

3. User Centric Definitions

The Social Web is often used to characterize sites that consist of
communities.It is all about content management and new ways of Fig. 2: Web of Document [20].
communication and interaction between users.Web applications
that facilitate collective knowledge production, social networking The proponents of the Web of Data envision much of the world’s
and increases user to user information exchange. data being interrelated and openly accessible to the general public.
This vision is analogous in many ways to the Web of Documents

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of common knowledge, but instead of making documents and The development of the Semantic Web proceeds in steps, each
media openly accessible, the focus is on making data openly step buildinga layer on top of another.Figure 4shows the “layer
accessible, the Web of Data hosts a variety of data sets that include cake” of the SemanticWeb which describes the main layers of the
encyclopaedic facts, drug and protein data, metadata on music, SemanticWeb design and vision [5].
books and scholarly articles, social network representations,
geospatial information, and many other types of information in 1. Unicode and URI
some ways like a global database that most its features are included Unicode is used to represent of any character uniquely whatever
Semantics of content and links are explicit and the degree of this character was written by any language and Uniform Resource
structurebetween objects is high based on RDF model. In fig. 3, Identifier (URI) is unique identifiers for resources of all. The
the structure of web of data is shown simplicity [14]. functionality of Unicode and URI could be described as the
provision of a unique identification mechanism within the language
stack for the semantic web [20].

2. XML
It is a language that lets one write structured Web documents with
a user-defined vocabulary. XML is particularly suitable for sending
documents across the Web. XML has no built-in mechanism to
convey the meaning of the user’s new tags to other users.

3. RDF
Resource Description Framework is a basic data model, like the
Fig. 3 Web of Data[20]. entity-relationship model, for writing simple statements about Web
objects (resources). A scheme for defining information on the Web.
A. Semantic Web RDF provides the technology for expressing the meaning of terms
The Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by and concepts in a form that computers can readily process.
internationalstandards body the World Wide Web Consortium.
According to the W3C [4], 4. RDF Schema
“The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows It provides a predefined, basic type system for RDF models.
data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and RDF Schema provides modeling primitives for organizing Web
community boundaries". objects into hierarchies. Key primitives are classes and properties,
The main purpose of the Semantic Web is driving the evolution subclass and sub property relationships, and domain and range
of the current Web by enabling users to find, share and combine restrictions.
in formation more easily. The Semantic Web, as originally
envisioned, is a system that enables machines to “understand” and 5. Ontology
respond tocomplex human requests based on their meaning. Such The ontology layer described properties and the relation between
an “understanding”requires that the relevant informationsources properties and different. Ontology can be defined as a collection
be semantically structured. of terms used to describe a specific domain with the ability of
Tim Berners- Lee originally expressed the Semantic Web as inference.
follows [2]:
“If HTML and the Web made all the online documents look like 6. Logic Layer
one huge book, RDF, schema, and inference languages will make It is used to enhance the ontology language further and to allow
all the data in the world look like one huge database”. the writing of application-specific declarative knowledge.
Tim Berners-Lee proposed a layered architecture for semantic
web that often represented using a diagram, with many variations 7. Proof Layer
since. It involves the actual deductive process as well as the representation
of proofs in Web languages (from lower levels) and proof
validation.

8. Trust Layer
It will emerge through the use of digital signatures and other kinds
of knowledge based on recommendations by trusted agents or on
rating and certification agencies and consumer bodies.
Semantic web is not limited to publish data on the web.It is about
making links to connect relateddata. Berners-Lee introduced a
set of rules have become known as the Linked Data principles to
publish and connect data on the web in 2007 [16]:
• Use URIs as names for things
• Use HTTP URIs to look up those names
• Provide useful information, using the standards (RDF) by
Fig. 4: Semantic Web Layered Architecture [5] look up a URI
• Include links to other URIs to discover more things

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Data providers can add their data to a single global data space People build
by publishing data on the webaccording to the Linked Data Companies Publish People Publish application though
principles. Content Content which people interact
and publish content.
B. Characteristics Web 3.0 is curiously
undefined.
The major characteristics of Web 3.0 as marked by Nova Spivackare Static content. Dynamic content.
AI and 3D,The web
[18]: learning
1. SaaS Business Model.
Blog and Social
2. Open Source Software Platform. Personal Websites
Profile
SemiBlog, Haystack.
3. Distributed Database –or what called as “The World Wide
Community
Database”. Message Board
portals
Semantic Forums
4. Web Personalization.
Buddy List, Address Online Social Semantic Social
5. Resource Pooling Book networks. Information
6. Intelligent Web.

C. Challenges VII. Web 4.0 and Future Web

Semantic Web faces several challenging issue like: Web 4.0 can be considered as an Ultra-Intelligent Electronic
Agent, symbiotic web and Ubiquitous web [25]. Interaction
1. Vastness between humans and machines in symbiosis was motive behind
The World Wide Web contains many billions of pages. Redundancy of the symbiotic web. Powerful as human brain, progress in
in Data may occur which has not yet been able to eliminate all the development of telecommunications, advancement on
semantically duplicated terms. nanotechnology in the world and controlledinterfaces using web
4.0. In simple words, machines would be clever on reading the
2. Vagueness contents of the web, and react in the form of executing anddeciding
This arises from the vagueness of user queries, of concepts what to execute first to load the websites fast with superior quality
represented by content providers, of matching query terms to and performance and build more commanding interfaces [24].
provider terms and of trying to combine different knowledge bases Web 4.0 will be read write concurrency web [23]. It ensures global
withoverlapping but subtly different concepts. transparency, governance, distribution, participation, collaboration
into key communities such as industry, political, social and other
3. Inconsistency communities. WebOS will be such as a middleware in which will
These are logical contradictionswhich will inevitably arise during start functioning like an operating system [26].WebOS will be
the development of large ontologies, and when ontologies from parallel to the human brain and implies a massive web of highly
separate sources are combined. intelligent interactions [27].

4. Deceit VIII. Conclusion

This is when the producer of the information is intentionally This paper provided an overview from the evolution of the web.
misleading the consumer of the information. Web 1.0, web 2.0, web 3.0 and web 4.0 were described as four
generations of the web. The characteristics of the generations are
VI. Comparision introduced and compared. It is concluded web as an information
The main difference between Web 1.0, Web 2.0and Web 3.0 is that space has had much progresssince 1989 and it is moving toward
web 1.0 is consider as read-only web targets on content creativity using artificialintelligent techniques to be as a massive web of
of producer web 2.0 targets on content creativity of users and highly intelligent interactions in close future.
producers while web 3.0 targets on linked data sets. The very few
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