Techmeme is full to bursting with posts announcing/decrying the announcement of something called Web 3.0. The kerfuffle follows an article in the New York Times yesterday, which is actually about semantic technologies — I gave a little overview in August and there’s more here. The ideas have been around since at least 1999, and are part of Berners-Lee’s vision for Web 1.0. My friend Marc Fawzi gave a good introduction to the idea in June:
…in the Semantic Web individual machine-based agents (or a collaborating group of agents) will be able to understand and use information by translating concepts and deducing new information rather than just matching keywords.
Once machines can understand and use information, using a standard ontology language, the world will never be the same. It will be possible to have an info agent (or many info agents) among your virtual AI-enhanced workforce each having access to different domain specific comprehension space and all communicating with each other to build a collective consciousness.
You’ll be able to ask your info agent or agents to find you the nearest restaurant that serves Italian cuisine, even if the restaurant nearest you advertises itself as a Pizza joint as opposed to an Italian restaurant. But that is just a very simple example of the deductive reasoning machines will be able to perform on information they have.
Far more awesome implications can be seen when you consider that every area of human knowledge will be automatically within the comprehension space of your info agents. That is because each info agent can communicate with other info agents who are specialized in different domains of knowledge to produce a collective consciousness (using the Borg metaphor) that encompasses all human knowledge. The collective “mind†of those agents-as-the-Borg will be the Ultimate Answer Machine, easily displacing Google from this position, which it does not truly fulfil.
There’s little to dislike about a better web usage model which will find answers rather than match search terms. The name Web 3.0 is as misleading as Web 2.0, though. Arguably, more so. We’re not talking about a new internet, or even, really, a better internet. For one thing, for the most part, it will be the same old web — you can’t retrofit a gazillion billion pages with a semantic markup that there’s still considerable debate about. What we’re actually talking about is improved ways into that information base.
And yes… I have still got a year and a half left on the domain name.
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Of all the fascinating / terrifying / amazing things happening with web communication and media and this is the topic of the day for the ‘meme massive? Yawn…
I prefer this version: http://mbites.com/web_3
I certainly like the picture a lot. (bookmarked for nicking later!)
I got a real buzz when I/we/you sorted out non-linear search… and now we’re talking about giving it all back to the machines! Tut.
Let me get this straight, so ALL new apps in the new Web 3.0 world will become semantic? Or will be it be a number of Web 3.0 agents going through the same old Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 pages you and I go through but just doing it faster?
Something is missing here. Ian, like you said, this is the same old stuff we’ve had for many years. Back in college I got into artificial intelligence, i.e., Lisp, Prolog (remember Philip Khan?); so I am acquainted with the underlying logics here. What is REALLY means for an “agent” to “understand” is to create non-linear databases or knowledgebases. That’s a lot of work and until someone can come up with a better way to collect data and knowledge I don’t think the average entrepreneur will have much ability to participate. So the prerequisites are:
1. Better semantic language — other than Lisp and Prolog types of languages
2. Better ability to assemble, collect massage data and knowledge
3. Faster computers and netware to CRUD data and knowledge
It looks like the dream is shortsighted because it leaving out all the visual and audio capabilities. What about 3-D and holographic imaging? What about Stereo imaging? What about incredible sound affects?
We’ve all dreamed of such a world!
I’ve always wondered what would happen should two agents come into contact with each other. :)
Hey does the NYT article on “Web 3.0″ count as plagiarism?
Web 3.0 as a term was not known on a mass scale to be related to the Semantic Web until that introductory article I wrote. In fact, I doubt if it was every related to the Semantic Web in any serious way before. The article I wrote (or the set of articles) where the first to make that relation and give an explicit and detailed definition.
NYT editors have been known to plagiarize… but in this instance I guess it’s more paraphrasing (or using as reference without giving credit) than direct plagiarizing.
heh
’)
Marc
Semantic? I always thought that was a rather pejorative term.
My problem is I still have not worked out what Web 2.0 is never mind Web 3.0.
I would rather we all concentrated on bringing Web 2.0 into the real world like we have with http://www.whisky.co.uk (Whisky 2.0) before we go down some dark tunnel called Web 3.0.
Question: How long will the technology/software of Web 3.0 take to address the issues we need to answer today. Back in 1999 we all thought the internet was the answer and we could all make a quick buck. Believe me I was there and it was painful (remember when people used to talk about “burn rate”?)
Let’s get right what we’ve got now before anything else — the technology can always catch up.
By the way — a great conversation.
Yes, I’ve been hearing about intelligent agents searching the web for me since I was in short trousers. I recall Copernic, at least, for about 8 years that was supposed to do this. (I’ve just looked and they’re still around — http://www.copernic.com).
When I’ve spoken to people about semantic technologies there have been two camps — one lot seems to be into microformats, intelligent agents and semantic markup; the other lot are talking about enterprise mash-ups and developing ontologies to understand pre-existing data stores.
There are already some ‘semantic’ applications — I’ve mentioned before that the National Health Service has one, for example, but they’re mainly being developed for internal use by larger enterprises. This is both easier — since the types of data are already in a set format and cover a set field — and provides profits for the developers pretty quickly, unlike a public project for the WWW.
And to sort of answer Simon, the ontologies that drive these intelligent agents need to be developed by people. Perhaps the del.icio.us database and similar could prove a great store of understanding how people categorise information that goes way beyond synonyms. It would make a lot of sense of the Yahoo acquisition if the search bods there were already working on this.
Whatever 3.0…
Both my boss Ian Green and Ian Delaney highlighted a recent article from the New York Times about the emergence of what is being termed web 3.0 which on the fact of it seems to be a reference to the…