User:Davidjcmorris/Web 3.0

Web 3.0 is a term that has been coined to describe the evolution of Web usage and interaction that includes transforming the Web into a database, a move towards making content accessible by multiple non-browser applications, the leveraging of artificial intelligence technologies and the Semantic web and three dimensional interaction and collaboration.

History

The term Web 3.0 first appeared prominently in early 2006 in a blog article critical of Web 2.0 and associated technologies such as Ajax.

The announcement of an open source search engine by Wikia in competition with Google and Yahoo has created speculation that improved search technologies will be a key feature and battleground of the World Wide Web. Wikia could provide a search engine that lets users edit and fine-tune its results.

In May 2006, Tim Berners-Lee stated:

“ People keep asking what Web 3.0 is. I think maybe when you've got an overlay of scalable vector graphics - everything rippling and folding and looking misty - on Web 2.0 and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data, you'll have access to an unbelievable data resource. ” — Tim Berners-Lee, A 'more revolutionary' Web

Definitions and roadmap

There is considerable debate in both the IT industry and blogging communities about whether Web 3.0 is a valid entity, and what it actually is. It is suggested by many that the term is just another buzzword, while the contrary view is that it as an evolutionary path for the Web as depicted by the following phases:

• Web 1.0: Web Browser driven "Interactive Web of Hypertext" pages where presentation, logic, and data are indistinguishable
• Web 2.0: Web Services based API driven "Web of Services" that separate "Application Logic" from the rest while intermingled presentation, logic, and data pages of Web 1.0. Examples of Web 2.0 application profiles include: blogs, wikis, the use of Ajax to improve web application interaction richness, and mashups. Web 2.0 does not explicitly expose Data Models.
• Web 3.0: The final step in the decomposition of monolithic Web Pages into discrete components that include: Presentation (HTML and (X)HTML), Logic (Web Services APIs), and Data (Data Models) trinity that transitions Web Data containment from Web Pages to Web Data. Its emergence simplifies the development and deployment of Data Model driven composite applications that provide easy, transparent and organized access to “the world’s data, information, and knowledge”
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At the Technet Summit in November 2006, Jerry Yang, founder and Chief of Yahoo, stated :

“ Web 2.0 is well documented and talked about. The power of the Net reached a critical mass, with capabilities that can be done on a network level. We are also seeing richer devices over last four years and richer ways of interacting with the network, not only in hardware like game consoles and mobile devices, but also in the software layer. You don't have to be a computer scientist to create a program. We are seeing that manifest in Web 2.0 and 3.0 will be a great extension of that, a true communal medium…the distinction between professional, semi-professional and consumers will get blurred, creating a network effect of business and applications. ” — Jerry Yang

At the same Technet Summit, Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix, stated a simpler formula for defining the phases of the Web:

“ Web 1.0 was dial-up, 50K average bandwidth, Web 2.0 is an average 1 megabit of bandwidth and Web 3.0 will be 10 megabits of bandwidth all the time, which will be the full video Web, and that will feel like Web 3.0. ” — Reed Hastings

Web 3.0 debates

There is considerable debate as to what the term Web 3.0 means, and what a suitable definition might be.

Transforming the Web into a database

The first step towards a "Web 3.0" is the emergence of "The Data Web" as structured data records are published to the Web in reusable and remotely queryable formats, such as XML, RDF and microformats. The recent growth of SPARQL technology provides a standardized query language and API for searching across distributed RDF databases on the Web. The Data Web enables a new level of data integration and application interoperability, making data as openly accessible and linkable as Web pages. The Data Web is the first step on the path towards the full Semantic Web. In the Data Web phase, the focus is principally on making structured data available using RDF. The full Semantic Web stage will widen the scope such that both structured data and even what is traditionally thought of as unstructured or semi-structured content (such as Web pages, documents, etc.) will be widely available in RDF and OWL semantic formats.

An evolutionary path to artificial intelligence

Web 3.0 has also been used to describe an evolutionary path for the Web that leads to artificial intelligence that can reason about the Web in a quasi-human fashion. Some skeptics regard this as an unobtainable vision. However, companies such as IBM and Google are implementing new technologies that are yielding surprising information such as making predictions of hit songs from mining information on college music Web sites. There is also debate over whether the driving force behind Web 3.0 will be intelligent systems, or whether intelligence will emerge in a more organic fashion, from systems of intelligent people, such as via collaborative filtering services like del.icio.us, Flickr and Digg that extract meaning and order from the existing Web and how people interact with it.

The realisation of the Semantic Web and SOA

Related to the artificial intelligence direction, Web 3.0 could be the realization and extension of the Semantic web concept. Academic research is being conducted to develop software for reasoning, based on description logic and intelligent agents. Such applications can perform logical reasoning operations using sets of rules that express logical relationships between concepts and data on the Web.

Web 3.0 has also been linked to a possible convergence of Service-oriented architecture and the Semantic web.

Evolution towards 3D

Another possible path for Web 3.0 is towards the 3 dimensional vision championed by the Web3D Consortium. This would involve the Web transforming into a series of 3D spaces, taking the concept realised by Second Life further. This could open up new ways to connect and collaborate using 3D shared spaces.

Proposed expanded definition

Spivack has also proposed expanding the above definition of Web 3.0 to include the convergence of several major complementary technology trends that are reaching new levels of maturity simultaneously including:

• 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, Semantic application platforms, and statement-based datastores
• Distributed databases, the "World Wide Database" (enabled by Semantic Wb technologies)
• Intelligent applications, natural language processing, machine learning, machine reasoning, autonomous agents.

Candidate Web 3.0 technologies

• Artificial intelligence
• Automated reasoning
• Cognitive architecture
• Composite applications
• Distributed computing
• Human-based genetic algorithms (recombinant text)
• Knowledge representation
• Ontology (computer science)
• Scalable vector graphics
• Semantic Web
• Semantic Wiki
• Software agents

See also

• Semantic Web
• Composite applications
• Internet
• Service-oriented architecture
• Web 2.0
• Web operating system
• World Wide Web

External links

• John Borland A Smarter Web
• Yehuda Berlinger Web 3.0 June 14, 2006
• Anon Web 3.0: A Smarter, Spookier Internet, Blog, January 4, 2007
• Anastasia Simakina Caught Up in Advanced Webs of Customization, St. Petersburg Times, February 13, 2007
• Phil Wainewright WebEx enters the Web 3.0 ecosystem wars, Zdnet blog, September 25th, 2006
• Stephen Baker Web 3.0, Businessweek.com, October 24, 2006
• Michael Hickins Can 'Spiritual Computing' Drive Web 3.0?, Internetnews.com, July 28, 2006
• Donna Bogatin Will Web 3.0 be in the green?, Zdnet blog, November 13th, 2006