The question of “what is the future of the web?” has been asked around my school recently... here is my take on the history and the future...
We are all familiar with the Web1.0 transition to Web 2.0 . Web 1.0 was the first “generation” of sites where content providers posted and “net-surfers” consumed. Web 2.0 started when we (that is the collective group of World Wide Web users) started creating content. eBay feedback, Amazon recommendations, Facebook, Blogger... any space where you log on and “post” content is Web 2.0.
Web 3.0 is generally used to describe “cloud computing,” where we (again any user with an account) uses applications provided on a web site. Google Docs and all of the other online apps systems are familiar examples.
We are also starting the hear about the semantic web. This is more difficult to define, and when one reads about it, we see tautologies and meaningless descriptions and links back to to other descriptions (is that a hyper-tautology?). Here is my understanding of what the semantic web will do:
First, we need to recognize that human language contains (a) what we say-- the syntax, and (b) what we mean-- the semantics. Sometimes these are in agreement-- we say what we mean; sometimes these aren’t in agreement-- we use double speak, euphemisms, and otherwise take poetic license.
So, designers of the semantic web seek to create search algorithms that are based on our semantics as well as our syntax.
Whenever I see the Bing commercials in which someone starts with a term and within seconds the search has turned into something far different, I see the motivation for the semantic web. Although the divergent search results portrayed in the Bing commercials are based on our syntax, they are not based on semantic.
Just one person's take on the terms that are kicking around...
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