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13.11.06

Behold! The Next Big Thing! Web3.0

Well it had to happen. After Web2.0 - John Markoff of the New York Times has gone and coined the phrase Web3.0. Now, I'm not even sure what Web 2.0 is - my definition always revolved around "social media" and "engaging in a conversation".
Web2.0 was all about stripping away the marketing bollocks that hijacked the web when it first emerged changing it from a push media, to a pull media and then to what it is today - a push me, pull me media.
And what Web2.0 is most certainly not about is technology as a lot of the tools we use now have been around for years and it's only recently that we have worked out how to use them to create something new.
Markoff argues that Web3.0 pioneers' goal is "to add a layer of meaning on top of the existing Web that would make it less of a catalog and more of a guide — and even provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion. That level of artificial intelligence, with machines doing the thinking instead of simply following commands, has eluded researchers for more than half a century."
That frankly is a bit scary.
Markoff notes that classic example of the Web 2.0 era is the “mash-up” — for example, connecting a rental-housing Web site with Google Maps to create a new, more useful service that automatically shows the location of each rental listing.
In contrast, the semantic Web3.0 will build a system that can give a reasonable and complete response to a simple question like: “I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of £3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child.”
If I wanted that sort of information I'd post it here, or go to one of several wiki's dedicated to this sort of thing or do an email to one of the several online communities I belong to.
Our proclivity for coming up with buzz words does nothing to move things on in the world of social media and Web3.0 is just that, a buzz word signifying nothing new but some as yet unfinished technology.
Let's concentrate on getting this right in the real world first and bed down Web2.0 before we start messing around with Web3.0.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's an interesting one isn't it...?

My understanding of social media is that it involved the human a lot more in technology. You only have to look at the idea of non-linear searching through the use of tagged websites and socially bookmarked blogs to see how the injection of human intelligence is potentially paving the way for a more useful refined web.

I've been blogging since february 2006... I'm an old cynic. Web 3.0 will never work.

Will Ockenden said...

Wow - Web 3.0

With so many PROs still in the dark over Web 2.0, this kind of buzz word will make them bury their heads in the sand even more...