Most of us use it every day for basic information, shopping, and interactions with friends, but few of us really understand how it operates. We are talking, of course, about the internet, which has been central to our lives for the past few decades. The internet doesn’t stand still. It is constantly changing and evolving into new iterations. Read on to take a peek under the net’s techy hood.
Search Engine Algorithms
Search engine algorithms have revolutionized the way the internet works and, in some ways, the way the world works as well. The internet contains hundreds of billions of web pages, which would be impossible to manage without a search engine algorithm like the one used by Google.
The primary task of a search engine algorithm is to find search results that closely and accurately match the user’s search query. Although it sounds simple, the algorithm has grown quite sophisticated over the years and now uses a wide range of metrics to deliver best results.
Targeted Advertising
Targeted advertising is another feature of search engine algorithm technology. Advertising has long been the driving force in certain industries, especially in media, and that extends to search engines and digital advertising. Search engines take data from users to offer more accurate ads.
While using the internet, search engines like Google are building a picture of your digital personality in the background. This persona tells the search engine more about your demographic and interests. If you’re interested, you can find out what google knows about me.
Generative AI Technology
Generative AI is a set of algorithms that transforms existing data from one medium to another. Generative AI made its first appearance early in 2022 with DALL-E 2, developed by OpenAI. DALL-E 2 is an image generation service that uses deep learning to create images from data.
Later in the year, several other generative AI tools appeared, transposing text to images and text to speech. The latest tool to hit the internet is ChatGPT, an interactive platform for generative AI that allows users to instruct the software to create different forms of text content.
Open Metaverse
The metaverse is thought to be the next iteration of the internet. Think of all those virtual world movies from the past few decades, The Matrix, Tron, various Black Mirror episodes, and many more. These ideas are prevalent in culture, but we are still waiting for technology to catch up.
The metaverse promises to be a digital world where people live and interact from the comfort of their homes. Using virtual reality, the internet of things, and many other techy innovations, people can live and interact like never before. It will be just like the movies, eventually, perhaps.
Decentralized Storage
Web 3 is the latest iteration of the internet and is based on the concept of decentralized networks. Although there was a major cryptocurrency crash at the beginning of 2022, Web 3 was relatively unaffected, and decentralized storage continued to progress. Decentralized storage technology has applications beyond Web 3 and will change the way apps are scaled.
