The Web As We Know It Is Disappearing

With the unmissable advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models (LLMs) and agents, we stand at the precipice of a profound shift in how humans interact with and relate to the World Wide Web at large.  

For the last 35 years, the Web has transformed how we use the Internet. But in doing so, an economic model has become entrenched: one organized around the interruption, capture, and maximization of attention to the detriment of everything else. When taken to its current extremes, this leads to suboptimal outcomes and experiences, creating a perverse relationship between users and its dominant platforms and applications.  

Tim Berners-Lee, the Web’s inventor, realized this was the likely trajectory in the early 2000s, fearing platform monopolies were increasingly eroding user empowerment and sovereignty. At that time, he proposed something he termed Web3 could be the solution, a concept focused on creating a semantic layer to structure and link users' data without locking them into a particular platform. 

Over the last decade, a new generation of technologists co-opted the term Web3 but instead tried to solve the same problems by using blockchain to unbundle the Web and empower users with the promise of digital property rights and ownership. However, in doing so, they introduced a level of complexity beyond the average user, be it new security risks of self-custody, or the cognitive overhead of managing digital sovereignty, signing various transactions, and leaving the Web and its status quo largely intact.  

As Big Tech and other platforms have begun translating these early data monopolies into powerful proprietary AI agents, there becomes an even more significant concern about how much control these platforms have on society at large, and the power increasingly being given to agents. However, to many in the field, it’s becoming increasingly clear that blockchain technologies could leverage those innovations in AI to be turned against the Web as it stands and its ills, finally delivering digital property rights at scale, crossing “the chasm” of user adoption. But how?  

Jamie Burke. Courtesy of Jamie Burke.

LLMs are already beginning to change how we search and discover information. Increasingly, people go to ChatGPT over Google, and we expect this trend to extend further across the various touch points of how we interact with the consumer internet. Their fundamental power is to make user interfaces more intuitive through natural language, including that of Web3, abstracting away complexity. Agents go one step further. As specialized software, they can act on behalf of users to perform specific tasks autonomously, such as data retrieval, decision-making, or automation of various workflows. In short, they can translate our intentions into actions. So, we can now own digital things, without the cognitive load of manually managing “on-chain” actions on blockchains. 

However, the relationship between blockchains and AI is not one-directional. The reverse is also true. Agents need a full economic agency to go from just advice or automation of simple tasks to being trusted to make purchases, sign legal agreements, or transact with other agents. Blockchains are a decade’s worth of battle-tested economic rails for “machine money” and smart contracts to extend our legal personhood.  

We believe this evolution, taken to its natural conclusion, will ultimately lead us beyond Web3, not to Web 4 or 5, but to a Post Web era. In this new paradigm, blockchain-enabled AI agents will handle the majority of transactional activity through adaptive and intuitive interfaces, such as booking holidays from flights to hotels. 

What will remain will be the “Intention Economy” – an internet optimized to solve our explicit or implicit intentions efficiently and effectively. Bypassing the attention economies’ search engines, interruptive advertising, and going over the top of the app stores, create better outcomes. Removing its inefficiencies and hidden costs and leaving a "Thin Web" - the residual part of the internet reserved for deeper, more purposeful interactions. Drawing parallels to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, users will engage with this Thin Web for enriching, purposeful experiences, beyond being mindlessly stuck in the infinite scroll of apps.   

The Web is disappearing, and entering a new “Delegate” phase of evolution, one that promises to be as transformative as the shift from “Read,” “Write,” and “Own.” As we stand on the brink of this new frontier, it's up to us to shape it to serve the best interests of users and society at large. 

Author Bio

Jamie Burke is the founder and chairman of Outlier Ventures, the global leading Web3 accelerator founded 10 years ago with over 350 portfolio projects across AI, gaming, real-world assets (RWA), (decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePin), and other Web3 verticals approaching USD 11 billion in combined value. 

Jamie founded Outlier Ventures in 2014 with the belief that decentralized technologies would introduce new paradigms for the web and create a more equitable and open economic system. Jamie's deep knowledge and experience of the industry puts him at the forefront of an investment landscape that spans various Web3 technologies as they converge to lay the foundation The Post Web, Outlier Ventures' vision for the next era of the internet.