A client of mine has asked for a description of Web 3.0, which I have kept an eye on, but from a distance, as I didn’t want to be distracted too much by the media hype machine. As I dig deeper into it, I’ve created a Web3.0 tag on Delicious and will continue to add to this. So far I’ve found a couple of good resources. My initial distillation of “Web x.0 in a nutshell” follows.
Description: Web 1.0: Universal Content, Read Only
What it Did: Basic Infrastructure of the Web, which is still in use
Prototypical Technology: HyperTextMarkupLanguage, UniversalResourceIdentifier
Examples: Websites
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Description: Web 2.0: Universal Participation, Read/Write
What it Does: Mostly social innovations, as we learn how to use the Web to communicate
Prototypical Technology: ReallySimpleSyndication, AsynchronousJavascriptAndXml
Examples: Blogs, social networks
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Description: Web 3.0: Universal Meaning, Contextual
What it will do: Mostly technological innovations as the Web learns (AKA Semantic Web)
Prototypical Technology: ResourceDescriptionFramework, OWL-WebOntologyLanguage
Examples: Wolfram Alpha