Beyond Web 2.0
I'm fascinated by how the web has evolved, and how speculation about how things are going to evolve, occasionally rages into a fully fledged battle. I was amused to read that Web 2.0 aficionados are so irate about the very thought of Web 3.0 appearing on Wikipedia that they've taken the page down several times already.
But if you think about it, it's a natural evolution of things. Web 2.0 is all about people interacting with the Web (Web 1.0 was entirely page driven with little chance to interact). Now through blogs, communities and social networks, people are driving the web (see the machine is using us video on YouTube for Web 2.0 in 5 minutes).
So the web has to evolve. It has to change to match this pace. See how the SIOC project explains that its all still about people. Look at the 10 emerging technologies for 2007 - all based around connections of computers and people.
Well, Web 3.0 will have to change the way we work again. (Read Nova's article on the third generation web). If you read about the Semantic web it actually makes a lot of sense. Things have to evolve, to become more intelligent, make that intuitive leap of faith, and the Semantic web can eventually grow into allowing this to happen. Computers will become more intelligent, but at the moment, they can't make that leap of intuition that a human can.
Several years ago I went to a talk hosted by Ray Kurtzweil and remember his statement that the human brain has about 16mb capacity - the same as Word 2.0. The thing that differentiates humans from Word 2.0 is that synapse jump, the leap of intuition that makes us connect random thoughts and ideas.
And that's what the web has to do too...
