ON THE QUEST TO DEFINE WEB 3.0

LABELS AND BUZZWORDS

Another heroic attempt up on Techmeme to define and intellectually stake out Web 3.0, as we're barely into Web 2.0. 

The author has a long post up on the subject, and I mean long.  It's over 8,700 words, 280 paragraphs, and takes up 29 pages in a Word document.

To his credit, there is an attempt to define Web 3.0 up front:

"Web 3.0

Definition: Highly specialized information silos, moderated by a cult of personality, validated by the community, and put into context with the inclusion of meta-data through widgets."

Having read through the entire post, and a valiant effort to write it must have been, it still strikes this reader as something that describes maybe Web 2.4 at best.

I have a couple of thoughts about Web 3.0.

First, I think we'll intuitively know and see it as distinct from Web 2.0, when we see it.  This includes Web 2.0 with all it's "sociability" and incremental versions all the way up to Web 3.0.

Second, even with the distinct demarcation, it'll feel like a natural, inevitable, continuation from Web 2.0, just as Web 2.0 feels like a natural, inevitable continuation from Web 1.0.

For those with proto-Web 1.0 memories, Web 2.0 feels very much like Web 1.0, with just more wired and wireless broadband, lot more open software, and hardware really zooming down the Moore's law price/performance curves.

But given my background in all this Web stuff, I do feel compelled to take a stab at my own definition of Web 3.0.

Web 3.0 will be Web 2.0 and Web 1.0, applied to machines* instead of people.

And while I'm at it, Web 4.0 will be Web 3.0, 2.0, and 1.0,  applied to discrete applications and data** instead of people and machines.

And they may all happen semi-concurrently than serially.

Just my two cents, continuing the "conversation".  Any thoughts?

P.S.

*  I'm using the word "machines" liberally, to really mean hardware or objects large and small (including VERY small), that have embedded software, an IP address, and a connection to the net.  Think meshed, social objects, to throw in some more buzz-words.

** I'm using the word "data" liberally as well, to mean digital information encompassing data, content, algorithms, and software application programs designed to "socially" interact with other similar "application/data sets" quasi-autonomously irrespective of the devices they run on.

P.S.S.  This post is 385 words not including this second footnote, and fits in one and a half Word document pages.  Just in case you were keeping track.

And for those of you who know me, you appreciate the amount of self-restraint it's taken not make the "Web 3.0" piece referenced above look like a fortune cookie, compared to the verbiage I'm capable of spilling.

Comments

[Alex Tolley]

If:
web 1.0 = single interactions( publish + e-commerce)
web 2.0 = multiple interactions ("harnessing collective intelligence" via social networks, blogging and associated technologies etc)

Then:
web 3.0 will have to stake out something very different. I think that you may be on the right tracks with "machines + data" - something that is more autonomous than lots of collective human interaction. My guess is that it will involve the constant input of various sensors, both machine and human, building up a rich data and meta-data soup on the web that both humans and machines can tap into - a sort of cybernetic ecosystem producing and consuming information.

"Mash-ups" may be an early transitional web 2.x, as are ideas of the "semantic web". I don't think that we necessarily need any new technologies, but I do see the discussion of platforms, APIs, interoperability as part of the transition to web 3.0.

As for web 4.0 - well I'll speculate and say that I see that as the web becoming "conscious".