Online Future Is in the Numbers
'Web 2.0' is giving way to bigger (and better) figures
Bloggers, to make a sweeping generalization, love nothing more than to blog about blogging. All this E-navel gazing, along with the occasional California conferences on the future of civilization, has produced a whole lexicon to describe what's going on with the Internet and where it's heading. Thence came "Web 2.0," that protean phrase that means everything from "harnessing the collective intelligence" to "I don't understand computers but want to sound like I know what I'm talking about." But things move fast. Forget Web 2.0. Say hello to Webs 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0.
At least, with Web 2.0, there is a general consensus on who should get the credit for the coinage. That honor goes to Tim O'Reilly, the founder of computer book publisher O'Reilly Media. He offers this former definition, which runs for five pages, based on his initial concept and the subsequent annual conference he holds on the subject.
But that was then. Now the race is on to be the first to pin down the authoritative definition of the next five incarnations. There are a lot of them.
Web 2.0 at least centered on a general concept: that there is enormous power in attracting widespread participation and content generation from users. As Slate's Paul Boutin wrote in March 2006, the phrase is no longer incarcerated in quotation marks to insulate the writer from its vagaries.
Browsing the speculation on the future Webs paints a picture of a digital world barreling toward a mythological Age of Everything, when all the information on the Internet is indexed in a giant database and integrated into our lives—and, in some definitions, our brains.
Web 3.0, in popular conception—here a reasonable consensus exists—arrives on the scene once we've designed machines capable of mining the Web for data as efficiently as humans, something often referred to as the "Semantic Web." PC Magazine has a good roundup.
Beyond that, it's open season. Some see Web 4.0 as the sum of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 (fuzzy math, to say the least). Meanwhile, linguistics professors express general bewilderment when asked how these terms come about and are reluctant to go on the record with much by the way of theories on Internet semantics. And it's hard to blame them—any theory is subject to the immediate ridicule of bloggers looking for a piece of the action. Here's a rundown of the traffic on the future Webs, using Google returns as a crude measurement:
Web 3.0: 2 million results. Generally thought to be the Web as a giant database.
Web 4.0: 168,000 results. Many theories involve the integration of Web 3.0 with our day-to-day lives, often mixed with intelligent machines who search the Web for us.
Web 5.0: 44,000 results. Definitions sound similar to Web 4.0, sometimes with more universality and more gadgets that liberate one from a computer, or more integration with marketing and consumer data, or less anonymity.
Web 6.0: 44,200 results. No idea, but the author wants to get ahead of the game. (Note: Returns for software called "FusionPro Web 6.0" inflate these returns.)
After that, it's more of the same. (Surveyors of Web 8.0 beware: It already has its own website.)
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