Web 3.0

Here is a new buzzword: Web 3.0!

Well, the word itself is, probably, not that new – it seems it was used for quite some time; but almost always it was used to describe just “something beyond web 2.0”. However, an article was published recently in NY Times which caught some attention. The article is written by John Markov, and it, basically, puts an equality sign between this new buzzword and something called “semantic Web”. The idea of the semantic web is simple, but powerful: to make data stored on WWW not only human-readable, but also machine-readable; to enhance the markup so that automated processors would be able to “understand” the meaning of each piece of data and its relation to other pieces. It will be possible, thus, to do many exciting things with the data found on the web: to analyze and aggregate data from multiple unrelated sources and to do extensive data mining.

Here are several more links to some quite interesting texts about semantic web:

“Minding The Planet -- The Meaning and Future of the Semantic Web” and a follow-up to Markov’s article “What is the Semantic Web, Actually?” written by Nova Spivack, a founder of Radar Networks, one of a few companies that are working on semantic web technologies.

So, should we say goodbye to Web 2.0 and switch to Web 3.0? Obviously, not! The two concepts are quite orthogonal, so the name “Web 3.0” is, probably, as misleading as it gets. (It’s funny to try and search WikiPedia for “Web 3.0” – the article is removed, because there is still no consensus about what “Web 3.0” is.)

Personally, I am quite happy about the development of the semantic web. New tools will mean more capabilities for Internet users; and new paradigm will mean more work for programmers – clearly, a win-win situation for me!

Technorati tags: web 2.0, web 3.0, semantic web