What will constitute Web 3.0

The following text is an outtake of an essay written in Introduction and theoretical foundations of new media.

Introduction
This essay will focus on different ideas all benefiting to the discussion of what will be the pillars of Web 3.0. To better understand the term, one is extracted from Wictionary, which states the following: “The predicted third generation of the World Wide Web - usually conjectured to include semantic tagging of content” . Definitions vary from source to source, but this peer-to-peer portal has managed to sentence the core value of the new phenomenon.

The development of web-based services and content has been rapid over the years. Ever since the Great Internet Explosion (Jargon File 2009), all of the factors (speed, content, users) defining the internet have increased tremendously.

In this essay, the focus will be on the tendencies which are taking place already today and by many expert users are thought to be what will constitute web 3.0 tomorrow.

To better comprehend where one will evolve to, it is important to see his or hers origins. While there are many opinions about what is web 3.0, experts have agreed that web 1.0 was the readable web (Cormode & Krishnamurthy 2008) and 2.0 was the writable web (O´Reilly Media 2005). Readable web in this context means that all of the content in the internet was one-way communicated: author published his or hers work on the internet and the readers could only consume. Web 2.0 brought the ability to alter that content, either by republishing it interactively (sharing), giving instant feedback to the author and or making the author’s role universal – everybody is a content consumer and provider today.

This tendency has brought internet users to a problem. Since everybody is now a content provider, the amount of information is too much to browse through using the old ways. It is believed by this author that web develops hand in hand with the flow of information. When more information is made available, then the more need there will be for it to be sorted out for the consumer. The need for the web to be not only a platform for information, but also as some sort of assistant to the browser, is the main idea, which goes hand in hand with definitions about Web 3.0. This study will go on citing factors that arise from the need for a “smart browser companion” and list them as follows.

Access from anywhere
The tendency to access one’s content from anywhere and from anything is cemented each day onward. Different technical gadgets available today play a vital role as the user will be linked to the web from different peripherals – laptop, mobile phone, home computer, game pod etc (New Digital Decade 2009). Also the widespread of such technical gadgets will force the liberation of content. Content has to be free – storage capabilities will be more and more web-based, eliminating the need for a personal HDD. This, among with mobile internet access solutions will cement the situation, where access to your personal info from any part of the world will be common.

Google CEO Eric Schimdt refers to the web 3.0 as the peak of cloud-computing. This will mean the inhalation of computers (stationary home computers), paid software etc (Daleisphere 2009). Everything would become web-based.

Expected is that sharing will be even more common. To picture the future in that field, one could take parallels from today’s http addresses: if today you expect to see content only by entering the http address, then tomorrow the majority would expect the same action to also enable sharing. This means that when a person browses the internet, everything will be shared in his or hers social networks, applications etc.

Widgets and the importance of them will also rise, as APIs turn out to be a standard in websites, therefore allowing its consumers to create gadgets to better the surfing experience (ReadWriteWeb 2007).

Semantics is the next big thing
Berners-Lee, the creator of WWW, sees the web 3.0 as a semantic web, being based on software agents, ontologies and metadata (DCL 2009). Tagging is not mentioned by him, but it can be concluded as a more archaic view of ontologies (user-created vs. computer-originated). The need for a semantic web is imminent, as we face now every day the need for information. But this need for information has its limits – today we search for it with the help of search engines. These engines however are too automated and lack the ability to take account factors affecting one’s browsing. For example – when John and Tom search for news about Limp Bizkit, John might want to see only news about their concerts while Tom wants to read, why their lead singer is a bad person and that the band should be banned. Today these search results can be achieved, but the price to achieve it is too high for us. We are expecting that the browser, or the search engine or something else would know our background, therefore not encumbering us with ongoing search words or irrelevant results. Semantic web is the answer to that problem, as it would address factors common to the current browser, offering therefore only comprehensive information to him or her (Siegel 2007).

However there is a small threat what might manifest in that tendency. To be exact – this sort of development of internet would further the concept of minorities over the internet, hardening the task to keep a society together. If one dislikes rap-music, Russia and classical music, then he or she would never ever see any content consisting of these factors. It is a censorship, but it’s purported by the user. However, over the reach of time, it has been always understood that censorship eventually destroys the society.

AI to be common
As the author stated in the begging of the essay, Web 3.0 will mainly lay on the need for assistance when browsing. This sort of assistance cannot be found in today’s systems as many experts distress. The creation or widespread of today’s options of Artificial Intellect use will be parallel to the spread of web 3.0. Internet users are getting tired of “dumb systems” (today’s search engines e.g.), which lack the ability of creative thinking. The creation or rope in of AI in one’s web-browsing experience will be inevitable when discussing the possibilities of developments in the internet.

Wired magazine creator Kelly goes on describing web 3.0 as not merely a semantic web (that knows its user base and serves them), but as a perfect machine, who sees (webcams), hears (podcasts) and knows (our entries) everything. He goes one saying that web 3.0 will be reached, when everything is on the internet (Wired 2008). May it be the bread from the grocery store, my cat or tires from the garage (RFID technology plays an essential role in benefiting that future outcome) (Eesti Ekspress 2009). In ideal, the computer will then be a partner to a internet user - a partner who speaks and thinks alike.

Privacy as a term forgotten
As stated partly before, the definite two common factors defining web 3.0 are semantics and privacy. Web 3.0 has to consist of elaborate semiotic capabilities, as humans don’t have the ability to filter the internet anymore (we need something to get the goods for us). The other essential factor is privacy. Nothing will be private anymore, as web 2.0 has proven, that protecting one’s privacy is an impossible task (Eesti Ekspress 2009). Therefore it is thought that the solution is transparency – everything about everybody will be public, therefore the need to misuse that information will be low or even absent (Eesti Ekspress 2009).

From the tendencies described earlier (constant sharing) it isn’t hard to imaging the ever-increasing difficulty to protect a person’s privacy in the internet . The recent wide-spread of location-based social networks will only raise the level of concern in privacy related issues. Seeing the option as web-wide democratization of private information is an interesting view. It is agreeable that privacy protection is a hard task and change of paradigm is necessary in that field, but to free all of the personal info is a troubling question – what would be the info then left private? Humans cannot simply abandon the private sphere of their personality; therefore we cannot expect that to happen in the internet too.

Also worth mentioning is that web 3.0 will be a lot more browser-based. As we can see the tendency to envision web 3.0 as a web-experience with personal assistant, then it is clear that the assistant needs some platform to work on (gather info). It could be a website, but browsers Chrome or IE seems to be more realistic. This monopoly made available to the browsers will of course further the threats to our privacy.

Beyond Web 3.0
If tendencies mentioned before will at some degree or wholly be apart of the future web 3.0 experience, some experts have argued that there are many more interesting things happening in the near future of web experience development. The author of this work nevertheless takes a more conservative stance and states the following tendencies to be futuristic and therefore fiction, that has the ability to come to life. As it is somewhat fictional, academic research on these fields has been poor if not absent at all.

Semantic web will definitely at some point make us rethink the HTML. As current system of hypertext mark-up is tremendously old, when compared to the overall “new-ity” of the internet (Nielsen 1995). We might need a new code for web, as today the web is meant for humans to use – but AI personal assistants are computer based, therefore HTML with its humane interface is obsolete, as it cannot be used by them effectively  (HowStuffWorks 2009). This change of paradigm is further supported, if programming would be automated too (today there is not as much as automated programming, as one would expect).

Another interesting and actually historical forecast is that Web 3.0 will destroy traditional media, as they will truly become part of internet, therefore eliminating the need to separate them (radio, paper, TV) as independent media. The tendency is supported by different researches stating the decrease of consumption of traditional media (Digital Journal 2009). Traditional media has always suffered under forecasts like these when a new medium is invented and later on widely used. Although we live in a Net-era, mediums like radio or television (paper-based media is affected, but still surviving) still exist and even prosper. Nevertheless it is believable that web 3.0 will at some point truly eliminate the old mediums. The reasons behind that lie in the tendency, that everything will be connected to the web – person’s car, TV-set, home-appliances etc. Today, radio has a monopoly in car stereo-systems, television in the living room and paper-based media in the mobility (read in anywhere). If everything would be connected to the web, it isn’t hard to imagine, how these monopolies will be lost. Nevertheless it is interesting to point out, that this opinion will always have strong adversaries (Tänavsuu 2009).

The last interesting tendency described of possible outcomes of web 3.0 is the virtual reality turned into real. Some experts see the web 3.0 as a “real” virtual reality – since everything will be connected to the web, everything would be on the web (DestinationCRM 2007). This can be imagined when looking at web-cites like Second Life. Web 3.0 in that environment would mean, that websites, content and web users will be real (virtually), making the browsing experience almost the same as “walking towards a mall, to buy jeans”. Recent developments in the PC hardware industry further support this possible outcome, as hardware like scent-producers (Invenia 2009) (think of a web-based bakery, which sells its goods over the internet, having consumers enchanted by the realistic smells from their PCs) or physics engines (objects etc. act on the PC as in real life) . This possible future outcome of web-experience was colourfully envisioned in a Hollywood movie “Chain Reaction” , where the main character browsed through the internet as a person would walk through a super-mall.

The main critique of this kind of web is the high entry-cost – since virtual reality demands a great amount of graphical work to be done, in the future only rich companies can create websites as small companies cannot afford to create elaborate a virtulistic (virtual realistic) “webpage” for themselves. Of course this critique can only be taken account today – it is unknown how graphic production would change over the years (maybe it will turn out to be entirely automated, so it would demand as much as coding as writing a HTML script).

Conclusion
All in all one could say that the main factors constituting the web 3.0 in the coming years are semantics, AI and mobility. Web browsers (or PCs themselves, or technological mobile accessories) will turn out to be more and more the browsers who offer assistant-like work outcomes for users to consume. This will be done by using elaborate schemes of semantics and also some degree of AI by the “automated browser”. Also it is clear, that information (content) will forsake all kinds of limits to its spread, meaning that it will be accessible from any type of machine or from any place on earth. And to add – threats to our privacy will arise, taking us at some time to a point, where a revolution of understanding towards that issue will happen. Nevertheless one has to notice, that the evolution of mediums is constant, as our dissatisfaction with the current systems thrives it (Pajusalu 2009).