The evolution of the World Wide Web (www) as enumerated below was initially conceptualized and invented by Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee was based on the ideology of universe access and the free flow of information without hindrance whether by technology, protocols, and procedural differences in approach(Timothy Berners-Lee, 2019). However, the web as was coined then has now metamorphosed into a universe platform of many things. It new evolutional outreach is fast progressing towards a quasi-emotive web of data, information, individuals, organizations, and devices(Kambil, 2008).

· Web 0.0 — Developing the internet — 1989

· Web 1.0 — The shopping carts & static Web

· Web 2.0 — The writing and participating Web

· Web 3.0 — The semantic executing Web

· Web 4.0 — Open, Linked & Symbiotic Web

According to Berners-Lee, the internet is conceptualized as a space of information objects(Tim Berners-Lee, 2002). To therefore uniquely identify resources within this space, a reference and pointer are necessary. Hence, the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) was conceived for the web as a system to name and locate a specific resource in an unambiguous way. While the unique resource locator is essential, the language of communication between the resource location and the requester is equally essential. For the web, the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the communication protocol between client computers and web server, which is implemented by sending HTTP requests and receiving HTTP responses.

In addition to both the URI and HTTP, the web relies on a text formatting language known as Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML) to enable human readability of HTTP responses(Tim Berners-Lee, 2002). The URI, HTTP, and HTML were the first foundational technology, communication protocol, and language but they have since evolved alongside the web with increased versatility and sophistication. Take for example the HTML language which was initially designed to handle text-only formatting has now evolved into handling graphics, audio/video, Text coding, serving as secondary references, etc. Also, the evolution of the web has not affected these three but also have engineered the creation of new languages like the Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) which defines a set of rules for encoding documents or data in formats readable to both human and machines. The XML has helped tremendously to reduce performance challenges in accessing large data sets by both humans and machines alike.

I am sure we all can agree that the web has made tremendous progress from inception until date, it current evolutionary position is not only significant in history, but it transforms our lives in many ways including its new ability to natively integrate machine learning and artificial intelligence possibilities. Pundits continue to wonder the next phase of its evolution with strong bet on it becoming a quasi-emotive platform in not too distant future(Kambil, 2008).

References

Berners-Lee, T. (Producer). (2002, 07 21). What do HTTP URIs Identify? This architectural question has now been decided by the W3C TAG, in a compromise which I think works quite well, and is described in a later short note and a TAG finding. Retrieved from https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/HTTP-URI.html

Berners-Lee, T. (Producer). (2019, 04 03). Longer Biography. w3c.org. Retrieved from https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Longer.html

Kambil, A. (2008). What is your Web 5.0 Strategy? Journal of Business Strategy, 29(6).