Web 3.0 already arrived around 2010 as the browser and server became one continuous application platform. Node.js, Flux, Backbone and Marionette, WebSockets, localStorage, HTML5, and CSS3 moved the web beyond page requests into structured interactive systems.
Brian Greenforest argues that the later blockchain label web3 overwrote an important engineering history.
The Web’s Third Architecture Connected Both Ends
AJAX defined Web 2.0 by updating a page without a full reload. The next generation added persistent local state, client-side navigation, component structure, real-time connections, and JavaScript on the server.
That combination changed the unit of design from a page to an application. Browser and backend could share language, data models, event flow, and long-lived interaction.
Name Technology by What It Made Possible
Version names shape which contributors and breakthroughs people remember. Reusing Web 3.0 for a financial and blockchain movement obscures the architectural transition built by the JavaScript community.
Founders, historians, and platform builders can preserve the distinction: describe blockchain systems by their actual mechanisms and give the interactive application web its rightful place in the lineage.
LinkedIn status when archived: Visible to anyone on or off LinkedIn.
Steve Haak and Olivier De Wulf please tell Ben Horowitz that Web 3.0 has passed long ago, and Industry 6.0 better aligns with modern versioning. Web 3.0 was in 2010, with Node.js and Flux and Backbone/Marionette (the post-AJAX post-jQuery structured interactive client-side applications with local navigation without going to server. AJAX was Web 2.0. WebSockets, localStorage, HTML5 and CSS3 were Web 3.0.)
Please stop branding the silly "web3" label (I understand you're trying to market and promote this name so badly). Too many of my friends feel ridiculed by your continued use of "web3."
Ask Paul Graham. Ask Brendan Eich. Ask Erik Elliott. Ask Dan Abramov.
Thank you very much, and I hope you'll hear us! 🙏
Happy Halloween, boo! 🎃
