European Commission Publishes Strategy Paper On Web 4.0 And Virtual Worlds

A. The content and significance of the strategy paper

On 11 July 2023, the European Commission published a strategy paper titled "An EU Initiative on Web 4.0 and Virtual Worlds: A Head Start in The Next Technological Transition" ("Strategy Paper").¹ The main purpose of the Strategy Paper is to set out the strategies to be used to ensure an open, trustworthy, fair and inclusive digital environment for EU citizens, businesses and public administrations by steering technological developments.

After Web 1.0, the infancy of the internet, which is referred to as the read-only web, came the participative social web era, in which user-generated content and people's interaction with each other have been part of our daily life. Since the 2010s, the semantic web, namely Web 3.0 technology, which is information-oriented and whose main features are openness, decentralization and full authorization of users, has become widespread. Now Web 4.0 focuses on digitization, enabling