Interwebs in Transit 🐎

Let’s go back to 1997; early days of the digital frontier.

Y2K buzz hadn’t started yet, but something else was quietly expanding in the public sphere.

College campuses and businesses in the United States, and in other locations around the world were connecting to a vast information highway known as the internet. Titanic the movie was released in the holiday season just before the week of Christmas.

Remember, the Desktop PC was just in its renaissance, with Apple's G3 macintosh just released to target the home market.

The web was built on this computer internet connection, with its own lexicon; — web sites, web chat rooms, web logs - blogs.

The good old post mail box was transformed to email, retrieved from a suite in its own website.

Online chat rooms were instant messaging early sensations like Yahoo messenger and AOL. Websites at this point were static - pure html.

Wayback machine yahoo home page

Unique user interactions emerged from using these digital products in a different way from their analogue shapes.

💡 Form follows function

This digital transformation of existing means of communication is the archetype here.

What changed a little ?
Shopping catalogues and magazines became scrollable pages.

What changed a lot ?

User Behaviour

Chat rooms and other forms of instant messaging changed the speed at which information passed and processed — the feedback loop shrunk.

The web evolved to convey more design artifacts, with opportunities to model intricate user experiences through interactive pages. These new possibilities are the case in point of digital transformation.

Medium

Email served as the gateway to online experience, and became a means of signing up for web services on early popular websites such as ebay marketplace, amazon bookstore, forums and live chat rooms.

Digital transformation of a means of communication leads to a new stream of possibilities.
Each new generation of computers, from mainframe to desktop and handheld devices enables advanced applications and design. Feature phones evolved to personal digital assistants like palm pilot and blackberry, followed by touchscreen smartphones.

Apple iPhone as launched in 2007

The last few years of the 2000’s were within the transition from full-keyboard handheld devices to touchscreen smartphones with online app stores. A few projects were also working on building for the improved technology available on faster internet connections via 4G. A unique announcement within this period was the Bitcoin white paper.

Bitcoin built on the successes of BitTorrent, a renowned peer-to-peer file sharing protocol, that leverages distributed networks to facilitate the efficient transfer of large files without relying on centralized servers.

💡BitTorrent walked so BitCoin could run

Bitcoin running on its Blockchain also preluded advanced applications of distributed computing power, from verifying cryptographic computation to running Virtual Machines, distributed storage, among others.

The web is built on hypertext transfer protocol, HTTP. Search engines utilize algorithms to analyze and rank websites based on their relevance to the input search query. A search engine indexes bowls of instant alphabet😉pasta for each plate of menu items according to keywords, with sponsored ads from restaurants across town.

💡When doors change, the keys for signing access also change

Blockchain data are unique in form and function, queried using purpose-built software for its vast amounts of transactions between nodes and network users. The Graph protocol is a data indexing layer for blockchain data. Developers, or consumers, interact with The Graph Protocol through its well-defined GraphQL API.

Using email as sign-in option served as a precursor in using externally-owned wallets for authentication, signing transactions, storing tokens, and deploying smart contracts on blockchains and decentralized applications.

A case of discontinuous variation
The latest stage of web evolution is closer to a new specie than a bigger and faster child.

In closing, let’s frame these 2 decades worth of conversation.

Is Web3 more of the same or something else entirely ?

Cheers to the roaring twenties !