The Directed Web

The Directed Web is a new way of looking at what's over the horizon for the next evolution of the web.

Web1 was the internet of documents. Web2 has been the internet of applications. So what is Web3 going to be?

It's clear, I think, that there's three main areas of technological advancement that are vying to become the Web3:

  1. VR/Metaverse
  2. AI/ML personalized/generated experiences
    • possibly related: quantum computing
  3. Crypto/Blockchain

Which one is going to dominate?

To be fair, most of the crypto/blockchain world has been using the term Web3 to describe their vision for the future of a decentralized web. The other two areas aren't particularly using that term as much. Though I think, arguably, they will eventually.

I honestly don't think we need to predict which area will win the Web3 race. In fact, I don't think one will win. I think it's much more likely that some combination of two, or likely, all three, is the most likely outcome.

But I also don't think that's going to happen any time soon. All three areas are quite frankly nascent in their infancy, and have many years (decades!) of shifting and invention ahead of them, before they can hope to capture the broad public's trust and focus.

Where should we head now?

So what is The Directed Web? Is it a different Web3? Is it Web4? Where does it fit?

Depending on how you look at it, The Directed Web is Web2.5 or Web3.1 or Web4.

I see The Directed Web as a series of more incremental, but profound and important, changes to our current Web2 paradigm, which will incrementally usher in Web3 and whatever's beyond. It will certainly need to be realized in multiple phases, which is why it's likely to transcend the Web2+ spectrum. For now, let's set aside the obsession to label it with a version. We have years ahead of us to argue about those labels.

How do we build The Directed Web?

If The Directed Web has to pick an affinity/direction, it's probably headed most into the crypto/blockchain space. But it's an admission/assertion that we're not quite ready for that version of the web yet.

And we cannot shy away from the perfectly valid skepticism of crypto/blockchain. And we should confront the reality that some folks are die-hard against the blockchain and maybe won't ever be convinced otherwise. And overcoming these sorts of obstacles isn't months or years away, it's years or decades away.

If we're going to ever going to make it (close) to blockchain's Web3 vision of "decentralized apps" (so called "dapps") and the full democratization of data, we'll have to build a bridge from the current Web2. And I think The Directed Web is how we do that. But we shouldn't stop there.

What are the phases of The Directed Web, as I see them? Where do we need to start? So far, this is kinda how I see it:

  1. Local-first, Local-only apps
  2. The web of (only) installed apps ("directed web apps" ~~ "dwapps")
  3. Erasing the distinction between data and apps

Phase 1: Local-first, Local-only apps

Stay tuned...