This brings us to the next phase of the internet, in which many wish to wrest back control from the tech firms that have come to hegemonize it.
The terms Web3 and Web 3.0 are often used interchangeably, but they are different concepts.
Web3 is the move toward a decentralized internet built on blockchain. Web 3.0, on the other hand, traces back to Berners-Lee's original vision for the internet as a collection of websites linking everything together at the data level.
Our current internet can be thought of as a gigantic document depot. Computers are capable of retrieving information for us when we ask them to, but they aren't capable of understanding the deeper meaning behind our requests.
Information is also siloed into separate servers. Advances in programming, natural language processing, machine learning and artificial intelligence would allow computers to discern and process information in a more "human" way, leading to more efficient and effective content discovery, data sharing and analysis. This is known as the "semantic web" or the "read-write-execute" web.
In Berners-Lee's Web 3.0 world, information would be stored in databases called Solid Pods, which would be owned by individual users. While this is a more centralized approach than Web3's use of blockchain, it would allow data to be changed more quickly because it wouldn't be distributed over multiple places.
It would allow, for example, a user's social media profiles to be linked so that updating the personal information on one would automatically update the rest.