Are we ready for Web 3.0?
- Posted by Tengku Zahasman on August 9th, 2007 filed in Thoughts, Web2.0, Technology, Artificial Intelligence
- (851 Views)
I noticed that there has been quite a number of discussions over the Internet on the topic of what the future Web 3.0 is all about. Like the current Web 2.0 itself, it is predictable that the term “Web 3.0″ will never get properly defined as well, but the term will eventually be used and mentioned in numerous papers, documents and materials, in blogs and the mainstream media to describe web apps that exhibit some sets of characteristics, features and capabilities more advanced than that of the current Web 2.0. The question is, what kind of characteristics are we talking about here?
The truth is no one knows, and only time will tell. But some of the most notable implementations mentioned around the term “Web 3.0″ includes the following:
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence itself represents the future, so it is no surprise that AI is going to be one of the core implementation of the future web applications. AI is, in itself, a very broad field of study which consists of many distributed branches like Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Data Mining, Voice/Pattern Recognition, Probability Algorithms and Expert Systems. Although they sound complex, what these things do is basically trying to incorporate human intelligence into machines - or in our case - the Web. Some of the web apps around lately has already started using AI techniques in their applications. SpinVox for instance has such an impressive “Voice Recognition” engine that I’ve seen so far, and also Odiogo.com which does the exact opposite so elegantly! There are also plans to somehow “restructure” (see below) the Web as a database which can be “mined” to extract a collective human knowledge around the world. Since I majored in Artificial Intelligence back in college, the idea of implementing AI to the mainstream web gets me pretty excited. 
Semantic Web
It doesn’t matter how many times I read about Semantic Web on Wikipedia, I will still have trouble understanding its concept as clearly. My understanding is that it tries to put the web information into an extensible sort-of way so that it can be “understandable” by machines (when I say machines, I mean computer programs) but at the same time can also be presented to human in a form that is described as “natural”. An easy example of this is RSS feeds, which have been widely used in content publishing. Today, the data that’s being published through RSS can be submitted to many different feed readers and websites. Web 3.0 may have higher ambition towards this by which the Web could even use, digest, understand, compare, and make decision based on all of the data being presented to them in certain formats. Semantic Web will turn the web into a so-called World Wide Database, realizing the concept of “intelligent web”. I could see that this is going to be closely related to the AI field above. Didn’t I mention that this is going to be hard to understand? 
3D Technology?
This can be quite ambitious, but with the recent invention of multi-touch technology, realizing 3D experience on the web might be just around the corner. A lot of this takes the Web beyond web browsers and using the SecondLife project as an example. However, something inside me tells that 3D stuffs just doesn’t cut it for the masses. We’ll just have to wait and see whether 3D is going to be the next big thing in the future web.
Open Technologies
Web apps providing open APIs and using open identities (such as OpenID) for authentication mechanisms. This will allow multiple apps to be pieced together and distributed into many different platforms and gadgets. That’s probably what Eric Schmidt tried to convey to the audience when asked about what he thinks of Web 3.0 is gonna be about. And this may also be the reason why Facebook is kicking off this year with their extensible app API feature that they provide.
The video below shows Eric Schmidt’s attempt in defining Web 3.0 even though it was not entirely what I had expected. I was hoping that he would’ve at least mentioned “AI” 
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August 9th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Tengku, great post. Let’s hope Web 2.0 has a bit more time to flesh itself out before we move to 3.0. My thought is that we will continue to see more convergence - RSS and other syndication technologies will push content convergence, open standards and API’s will push platform convergence - the lines between collaboration and publishing will continue to blur, as will the lines between content creators / publishers / and media.
August 9th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Hi Tengku,
Thanks for a great blog. We’ve been enjoying reading your posts about webv 2.0 and 3.0, web 2 entrepreneur, making money with web 2.0.
We agree that web 2.0 has never been clearly defined and actually have a fun discussion going on at our new blog.
We’d welcome your input.
http://www.web2iswhat.com
Jeff
PS - We’ve never been to Malyasia but have lots of friends who have been there to skydive and base jump and they love it.
August 9th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
@Joel: Interesting point! It’s true that we need to give Web 2.0 more time to mature and build upon itself. There are still plenty of issues need to be dealt first before we jump into the Web 3.0 bandwagon. Maybe we just can’t wait to draw the line between Web 2.0 and the future Web 3.0. With new web technologies popping up here and there, who can?
@Jeff: Thanks for the nice remark in your comment! Even though Web 2.0 has not been clearly defined, the impact it has on the evolution of the Web is great. So I detest any ideas which suggests that “Web 2.0 is JUST a buzzword”. It may be a buzzword, but it does more than just being that. Keep it up
August 9th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Here’s another question about Web 3.0, what will be its purpose? The purpose of Web 2.0 is simple: It allows the masses to communicate with one another using Internet tools. What will be the purpose of Web 3.0?
Check out my living textbook: http://www.pass-ed.com/Living-Textbook.html
August 10th, 2007 at 7:03 am
@Andrew Pass: Good question. While the purpose of Web 2.0 focuses more on collaboration and user participation, I would guess that Web 3.0 is gonna be more about web “automation” - in an intelligent way, that is.
Web 2.0 as we know it has been the ultimate reason of the “content boom” on the Internet. Wikis, blogs, user comments, discussion boards, RSS feeds.. all of this adds content (read: knowledge) on the web. Web 3.0 is going to ‘make use’ of this massive human knowledge on the web and put it to good use. Of course that is just from my perspective..
August 10th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
[…] Artificial Intelligence itself represents the future, so it is no surprise that AI is going to be one of the core implementation of the future web applications. AI is, in itself, a very broad field of study which consists of many … …more […]