Most of us are still not gone out of the Web 2.0 fad and the buzz words of social networking, enterprise wide collaboration, Ajax, user generated content …etc and there is already a new word emerging in the market- Web 3.0.
What is Web 3.0?
There are lots of definitions revolving around the internet about Web 3.0 from various so called experts of the next generation internet technology out of which the following definition looks sensible to me:
“Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform.”
Web 3.0 synonymous to semantic 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.
Nova Spivack defines Web 3.0 as the third decade of the Web (2010–2020) during which he suggests several major complementary technology trends will reach new levels of maturity simultaneously including:
transformation of the Web from a network of separately siloed applications and content repositories to a more seamless and interoperable whole.
ubiquitous connectivity, broadband adoption, mobile Internet access and mobile devices;
network computing, software-as-a-service business models, Web services interoperability, distributed computing, grid computing and cloud computing;
open technologies, open APIs and protocols, open data formats, open-source software platforms and open data (e.g. Creative Commons, Open Data License);
open identity, OpenID, open reputation, roaming portable identity and personal data;
the intelligent web, Semantic Web technologies such as RDF, OWL, SWRL, SPARQL, GRDDL, semantic application platforms, and statement-based datastores;
distributed databases, the "World Wide Database" (enabled by Semantic Web technologies); and
intelligent applications, natural language processing., machine learning, machine reasoning, autonomous agents
Web 3.0 is being thought to be like having a personal assistant who knows practically everything about you and can access all the information on the Internet to answer any question. Many compare Web 3.0 to a giant database. While Web 2.0 uses the Internet to make connections between people, Web 3.0 will use the Internet to make connections with information.
For example: Let's say that you're thinking about going on a vacation. You want to go to someplace warm and tropical. You have set aside a budget of $3,000 for your trip. You want a nice place to stay, but you don't want it to take up too much of your budget. You also want a good deal on a flight.
With the Web technology currently available to you, you'd have to do a lot of research to find the best vacation options. You'd need to research potential destinations and decide which one is right for you. You might visit two or three discount travel sites and compare rates for flights and hotel rooms. You'd spend a lot of your time looking through results on various search engine results pages. The entire process could take several hours.
But with Web 3.0 you'll be able to sit back and let the Internet do all the work for you. You could use a search service and narrow the parameters of your search. The browser program then gathers, analyzes and presents the data to you in a way that makes comparison a snap. It can do this because Web 3.0 will be able to understand information on the Web.
Right now, when you use a Web search engine, the engine isn't able to really understand your search. It looks for Web pages that contain the keywords found in your search terms. The search engine can't tell if the Web page is actually relevant for your search. It can only tell that the keyword appears on the Web page. For example, if you searched for the term "Saturn," you'd end up with results for Web pages about the planet and others about the car manufacturer.
A Web 3.0 search engine could find not only the keywords in your search, but also interpret the context of your request. It would return relevant results and suggest other content related to your search terms.
If all the above mentioned things mentioned looks like a story to you, as a sample, just watch the video tutorial of a Web 3.0 application “SmartLinks” to know how the application understands the context:
http://www.adaptiveblue.com/smartlinks.html
So you believe it nowJ.
Let’s wait for this technology to grow to an extent that you create an internet assistant of yours who understand you completely and will work for you on behalf of you to earn for you so that you can be away spending while your agent accumulates for your next spending.
So future offices might not have people but their virtual internet agents, which will be the actual virtual world.
Let’s all wait for those days to come.
