Heads up everyone — Web 3.0 is starting to emerge. I’m not talking about random BS. I mean real, legit examples of new tech. Below is a quick way to think about the evolution of the Web since it really came onto the scene in the 1990s.
- (Past) Web 1.0 – Bland webpages. Email, IM. (Early AOL, Netscape, lots of .gov pages).
- (Current) Web 2.0 – People find ways to communicate better though social networks and blogs (Facebook, WordPress).
- (Near Future) Web 3.0 – Social aspects of Web 2.0 merge with visualized data (i.e. Excel tables start translating their data in pretty pictures because visuals communicate info better than boring data). Examples seem to be Freebase (a better version of Wikipedia), Socrata (social data) and (believe it or not) Microsoft’s new Pivot tool.
I think up until now, Web 3.0 has been a buzzword. And for all intents and purposes, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 are the same thing…right now. We just can’t be caught with our pants down like we were with the transition from 1.0 to 2.0.
But now specific examples are here, so how can these tools be used to better improve government?
Looks interesting. I just wish VIPER would explain itself in basic English (my big pet peeve) — we show everyone your position on a map so we can figure out how to work better. Translated FROM: The Virginia Interoperability Picture for Emergency Response (VIPER) allows the Virginia Emergency Operations Center to display information that relates to each other spatially in order to drastically improve the situational awareness of response, recovery coordinators, and local emergency managers.
Is there a preview or tour available to the public?
Firoze, I wish it were downloadable to the general public — but it’s only available to those that were at the recent TED Conference. However, here is a link to an embedded TED video that shows Pivot in action.
Sterling, sorry I meant is there a preview of Viper available to the public. And thanks for the link to the Pivot video. That is awesome stuff.
There may be a problem of definition here, as there was for 2.0 for a while. I’ve seen Web 3.0 used to describe 3-dimensional interaction, whether real-time with other people, or with constructs like human anatomy or mechanical systems. I’ve also seen it used to describe the Semantic Web (metadata, etc. readable by computers but imperceptible to human viewers). Maybe we’ll have 3.0A, 3.0B, etc.?
It strikes me that right now, it’s too easy to really pin down the defining characteristics of Web 3.0 (i.e. Semantic Web) as they are definitely changing all the time.
I should have clarified that in the post, which really is an attempt at picking out the early definition of Web 3.0, not its permanent definition. I also should have mentioned Web 3.0 likely being heavily based on smart phones, mobile computing, etc.
Heck, it’s only recently that a concensus has risen on Web 2.0 being primarily social media and collaboration.