The Next Generation Web: Technologies and Services

Abstract

Tim Berners-Lee, invented the World Wide Web (WWW) or Web in short in 1989. The Web became so popular that for many, it is synonymous with the Internet or simply the Net. There were many flavors of the original Web like Web 2.0, Web 3.0, etc. All these versions of Web are different use-cases of the original Web, which is fundamentally Client-Server in nature. A client Web browser (or user-agent) makes a request for a document (or a transaction), and the server services that request – kind of a synchronized request-response service (Pull service). The Next Generation Web (NGW) will have a fundamental paradigm shift – it will be two-ways (full-duplex) asynchronous Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communication between two Web browsers using HTML5, Secured WebSocket (wss://), Server Sent Events (SSE), and JavaScript. The Next Generation Web (NGW) will be for human to human, and human to machineries (robots) interaction. Major technologies in Next Generation Web include WebRTC, Web Speech API, and WebUSB. WebRTC is already standardized by W3C and IETF. Web Speech API is at the draft a state. WebUSB is still evolving. NGW is a technology and not a solution – NGW does not need any additional downloads or plugins or any intermediate server. WebRTC supports real-time ultra-low latency audiovisual media and non-media arbitrary data with recording facility. Web Speech API includes speech recognition, speech synthesis, and audio processing on the Web browser. WebUSB will allow USB devices connected to the Web for Collaborative Robotics (Cobotics). Added with AI and IoT, Next Generation Web will revolutionize the Web application and digital transformation ecosystem from computers to mobile phones starting from simple Web page viewing to complex Health care applications and cobotics that will touch everybody’s life.