Web 3.0

[tommylogic]

Well it is inevitable...

From Wikipedia:

Web 3.0 is a term that is used to describe various aspects of the evolution of Web usage and interaction along several paths. These include transforming the Web into a database, a move towards making content accessible by multiple non-browser applications, the utilization of artificial intelligence technologies, the Semantic web, the Geospatial Web,^{[citation needed]} or the 3D web.

From PC Magazine:

To many, Web 3.0 is something called the Semantic Web, a term coined by Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the (first) World Wide Web. In essence, the Semantic Web is a place where machines can read Web pages much as we humans read them, a place where search engines and software agents can better troll the Net and find what we're looking for. "It's a set of standards that turns the Web into one big database," says Nova Spivack, CEO of Radar Networks, one of the leading voices of this new-age Internet.

Google Web 3.0

[mjhoagland]

Yep, Cyberdine is innevitable. Web 2.0 was people coming together with information and now Web 3.0 is machines coming together with information. Now machines will be able to track people. Just the next evolution of things.

Web 4.0?? That's what I'm hypothesizing. Let's say virtual web-pages? We've already got the info, the people and the machines. So then just mash it all together. Mmmmm tasty. The Borg are coming ;)

[Zaoris]

Actually, the fact that quite a few people know what exactly "web 2.0" is, is intriguing me.
What's even more intriguing is that we're aleady talking about "web 3.0".

[mjhoagland]

Should it be so intriguing though? The 2.0 craze has already been going on for over a year and a half now? In the web anything that lasts over one year is pretty much ancient. So, I'm actually a little surprised we haven't been talking about Web x. Which is what I think it will be referred to. "Web X", not Web 10, just X, will become the popular term and it will mean the ever changing evolution of the relationships between technology and people. Nobody wants to spatter out Web 2,185,204.0 after several decades. :P

Purely my own speculation, obviously.

[Zaoris]

Should it be so intriguing though? The 2.0 craze has already been going on for over a year and a half now? In the web anything that lasts over one year is pretty much ancient. So, I'm actually a little surprised we haven't been talking about Web x. Which is what I think it will be referred to. "Web X", not Web 10, just X, will become the popular term and it will mean the ever changing evolution of the relationships between technology and people. Nobody wants to spatter out Web 2,185,204.0 after several decades. :P

Purely my own speculation, obviously.

Intrigued that even if it's ancient as you said...there are still people who don't undertand it.
And yes, I agree with the Web X name and the whole idea of a popular term.

[Harry]

From my boss: "If you get excited by the prospect of Web 2.0, you probably weren't paying enough attention the first time round."

I'm sure the same applies to Web 3.0.

[pingeyeg]

That is some freaky cool stuff. I still haven't gotten my bearings about the web 2.0 stuff. I might be coding stuff in web 2.0 and not really even know it. Machines thinking like humans, what is the world coming to. Are we getting that lazy?

[D856C]

We will have the semantic web working enough to base a purported 3.0 version on about two weeks before the singularity (geek rapture) happens. You'll need functional AI to pull it off. As far as markup, most people can't figure out abbr versus acronym.

Most people can't even begin to imagine the design parameters for Web 2.0. ...No, not slapping up a site and praying -- social interaction design methodology. That would be having the slightest inkling about how you actually achieve a certain pattern of social interaction so you can design with the intention of producing it.

Things like user generated content and social interaction became "build it and they will come" of the very worst sort. Mostly, users showed up sometimes and often didn't, without anyone really knowing the reason why. That's not design.

RIAs in perpetual beta quickly devolved into a convenient "get out of user testing or insight FREE" card. And a crutch to foist some really bad design on users. That's social -- socially inept -- but social. The result was Autistic Social Software. The abusive use of beta isn't design, it's anti-user avoidance of design and so socially reprehensible.

Consequently, in practical working fact, Web 2.0 and 3.0 turn out to be fashion applied to technology. Read Web 3.0 by Jeffrey Zeldman -- it's the closest to Web 3.0 most people will see.

This is coming from someone hired to develop Internet II (the ultra high speed net connecting universities) applications for fostering a social interaction design pattern called The Medici Effect.

You've never heard of it because "throw it at the user and see what sticks" has replaced any clue about interaction design. Social interaction patterns that "just kinda happen" isn't design. Projects that banter endlessly about the technology and not the user result are just tacking on trendy gimmicks, not design.

Design involves the human result you intended to achieve, not the stuff that just happens. Most design firms might as well be discussing the metabolism of unicorns as discuss Web 2.0 and the social web.

[Scriptage]

Man I've missed you D856C!

Alot of the so called Web 3.0 does actually focus on usability, for example, The Platform for Privacy Preferences Specification. The fact of the matter is that website development is going to become increasingly harder over the next ten years with initiatives such as The Semantic Web using ever more complex technologies such as RDF and The Web Ontology Language (OWL); OWL allows us to express relationships between data that we haven't been able to before and as such allows us to infer meaning from the data that has been explicitly defined.

In years to come commercial websites will ALL be using OWL in order to take advantage of the advanced capabilities it offers, it will be used for anything from online menus to shopping carts, document directories to family trees, the possibilities are immense.

When semantic search engines can give you much more acurate results why would you use Google? That's why the technology will be embraced commercially, if they don't they will lose an awful lot of custom.

Regards

Carl

[Arkady]

What happened to all the minor version changes between 2.0 and 3.0?