f o d ?

n b e e e w h T he t

Feature TECHNOLOGY

First the Web, then Web 2.0. Where will it all end? Apparently just after Web 3.0. Fran Molloy reports on the internet of the future ... today.

here has been much ado about Web 2.0. Even the recent Cutler Innovation Review recommends that government departments give some consideration to taking it on board. So you may be as surprised to learn that Web 2.0 is the version of the internet were all using at the moment. But what of Web 3.0? It seems that Web 3.0 is the internet we are about to become the internet we can expect to see in the next decade and that will change the virtual world in which increasing portions of our lives are spent. Where do you want to go tomorrow? While no-one has a crystal ball, it seems that the key to the future as always lies in the past and the present. When, where and why the internet morphed into version 2.0 is unclear, but the internet of the present is a much-enhanced version the original World Wide Web. The Web was invented by English scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. (I know this to be true because this exact same sentence has existed on the Wikipedia entry for Internet unchanged for at least the last year.) Web 1.0 wowed visitors in the heady midnineties with its blue-underlined hyperlinks, its

preponderance of Times New Roman black text on plain white backgrounds, tiny 3K image files, the no-spills thrills of web-surfing and its promise of unlimited information. It was populated by spotty science geeks and out-there artists and, according to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (which preserves early pages judged to be of merit in a Web Pioneers museum), it was irreverent, Star Trek-obsessed, visionary. Early web heroes included the Yahoo directory, Amazon, the Internet Movie Database, The Well, Feed magazine and NASA; and the growing web community agonised over the likely effects of the commercial influence of Microsoft and AOL. There goes the neighbourhood, indeed. Fast-forward to 2008 and the egalitarian, almost hokey, community-hall feel of the mid-nineties web has been replaced with a sleeker, prettier, commercially-dominated and far more crowded virtual world resembling more modern shopping mall than village market. By mid-2008, market analysts Internet World Stats reported that 22 per cent of the worlds population was online. Rates vary greatly between regions, of course, with 73.6 per cent of North Americans, 48.1 per cent of Europeans and just 5.3 per cent of Africans online.

69

Internet World Stats defines an internet user as any person with available access to an internet connection point, and a basic knowledge of web technology. Regional variations aside, it seems that we are fast approaching a time where humans have indeed created a technology-mediated forum capable of creating and reflecting a global consciousness. The term Web 2.0 emerged in 2004 when prominent tech publisher Tim OReilly pointed out that influential movers and shakers in the world particularly the business community had embraced the internet to such an extent that the Web was now serving as a platform, hosting various applications. The commercial web is now a teenager its been fifteen short years since Marc Andreessen released the Mosaic browser, OReilly said recently. Since 2004, OReilly Publishing has hosted an annual Web 2.0 Summit; and with another planned for 2009, its fair to assume that they expect the current version of the internet to remain in place for some time. Characteristics of Web 2.0, according to OReilly, include social networking (like Facebook and LinkedIn), AJAX (interactive webpages that use programs like Java), folksonomies (tagging), lightweight collaboration (eg Wikipedia) and media sharing. Permalinks encourage conversations between solitary bloggers and a prevalence of collaboration has generated the wisdom of crowds that has contributed towards the participatory Web 2.0 that we see today, despite the revelations of a 2007 Hitwise study which showed that the vast majority (80 to 90 per cent) of Web 2.0 users are passive consumers of content on the web.
The future is here

The commercial web is now a teenager its been fifteen short years since Marc Andreessen released the Mosaic browser
in the blogosphere are notoriously inspired by sci-fi sensibilities, they are active in cuttingedge technologies and they clearly represent the estimated 1.5 per cent of web users who actually generate content. But what will the remaining 98 per cent of web users experience in Web 3.0? Weve checked in with a panel of experts to get some predictions for the internet we can expect to experience in the next decade. Some have come back with visionary ideas for a global utopia while others have a darker view of our web future. Heres their take on Web 3.0.
Is Web 3.0 all semantics?

Google hands-down. The Web will get better and better at helping us to manage, integrate, and analyse data, Berners-Lee told the United States House of Representatives in March 2007. Today, the Web is quite effective at helping us to publish and discover documents, but the individual information elements within those documents (whether it be the date of any event, the price of an item on a catalogue page, or a mathematical formula) cannot be handled directly as data. Today you can see the data with your browser, but cant get other computer programs to manipulate or analyse it without going through a lot of manual effort yourself. As this problem is solved, we can expect that Web as a whole to look more like a large database or spreadsheet, rather than just a set of linked documents.
The auto-service web

But according to technology entrepreneur Nova Spivack, founder of EarthWeb, were already heading into Web 3.0. While the innovations and practices of Web 2.0 will continue to develop, they are not the final step in the evolution of the Web, he argues, suggesting that mid-2007, the internet crossed a threshold into Web 3.0, with back-end infrastructure upgrades tipping us towards a third generation of intelligent internet services like natural language search, data-mining and distributed databases. Theres already an abundance of definitions of Web 3.0, since the phrase was coined by New York Times journalist John Markoff in 2006. And as we hit the third decade of the internet 2010 to 2020 most pundits are betting that Web 3.0 will be something bigger, better and brighter than anything ever before. The tech visionaries who dominate discussions

No Future Web exploration would be complete without comment from its founder, Tim BernersLee, who has for many years been researching the development of the Semantic Web, which will feature more intuitive ways to find and share information. In a 2006 journal article, The Semantic Web Revisited, Berners-Lee described the Semantic Web as a linked information space in which data is being enriched and added. It lets users engage in the sort of serendipitous reuse and discovery of related information thats been a hallmark of viral Web uptake. He believes that the Semantic Web will beat

American author and tech entrepreneur Sramana Mitra grew up in India with a household full of servants and has worked in artificial intelligence. I thoroughly enjoyed the lifestyle of being able to delegate tedious tasks to servants, she writes, adding that she envisions a Web 3.0 populated with intelligent agent servants using clever predictive software that can mimic human reasoning and will converge with the semantic, data-rich web to automate many repetitive tasks. She suggests that artificial intelligence agents will perform specific functions such as a travel agent, or a personal shopper agent or a personal financial advisor agent and each will fall into a sustainable business model including advertising and ecommerce revenues. Web 3.0 is a verticalised, contextualised, personalised web. Research organisations like the World Wide Mind project are already reporting successful development

70

Feature TECHNOLOGY

of web-based applications that can perform logical reasoning operations.

The everywhere web

The Web will be accessible from a growing diversity of networks (wireless, wireline, satellite, etc) and will be available on an ever-increasing number of different types of devices, Berners-Lee says. People living in Western cities are already seeing this in action with the growth of GPS devices, access to the internet from many mobile phones, wifi access points available in coffee shops in metropolitan areas, with many major cities also offering or planning to offer free wifi access.
The everything web

gmail as their email, keep all their email photos on FlickR, their documents on Google Docs and run their accounts through Freshbooks. Computer manufacturers are tapping into a growing market for tiny laptops that run very basic applications but are mainly used for wireless internet access for users who keep most of their data online.
The rise and rise of social networking

The internet fridge, it seems, was not the dud we thought it was; it was just ahead of its time. Web 3.0 could well mean that even your washing machine will be online. Many inventors have dreamed up web-enabled furniture and goods like the internetenabled cutting board that downloads recipes and displays them on a screen, or Microsofts internetenabled park bench, even the internet-enabled toilet, called the iLoo (a prank, apparently!). Gadgets like the Chumby (a customisable toy that allows web surfing via a tiny touchscreen) and the Nabaztag (a wifi enabled plastic talking bunny alarm clock that downloads weather forecasts, news headlines and email messages) are already garnering keen fans; within the next decade, its likely that we will see internet access on all sorts of devices. Web applications will become more and more ubiquitous throughout our human environment, with walls, automobile dashboards, refrigerator doors all serving as displays giving us a window onto the Web, Berners-Lee says.
Cloud computing

Howard Rheingold is a writer and futurist whose book, My Virtual Community, documented one of the Webs earliest social networks, the Well. Rheingold has been actively involved in social networks ever since and predicts that webcam and video-web interaction will be ubiquitous across the internet within the next few years. But the global rush to participate in social

series of 3D spaces, letting users connect and collaborate using 3D shared spaces and immersive interaction using microphones, voice- and gesturecommands and virtual reality goggles and perhaps even bodysuits. Cyberdildonics is the future of the web! jokes Podcast Network CEO Cameron Reilly, who predicts that the porn revolution that popularised the web among certain groups will continue to be a big commercial driver. But he also argues that porn is no laughing matter; for many big governments and telcos, scare tactics about exploitative and harmful content are a convenient excuse to attempt to exercise censorship and control over the free-speech culture of the internet.
The end of the internet: the doomsday scenario

While the innovations and practices of Web 2.0 will continue to develop, they are not the final step in the evolution of the Web
networking has come at a price, with many users disillusioned when social networking sites bristled with advertisements, exploited their data or even made it very difficult to opt-out. Facebook user Nipon Das made headlines when he tried to delete his Facebook account but was prevented from doing so easily. He told the New York Times that Facebook was like the Hotel California You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
Neuromancer comes alive: the 3d web

Will all your data sit on a server in India somewhere? Or Russia? And what does that mean for privacy? Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Seoul Digital Forum in 2007 that Web 3.0 will be characterised by a different approach to computer applications. Web 3.0 will ultimately be seen as applications which are pieced together. There are a number of characteristics: the applications are relatively small, the data is in the cloud, the applications can run on any device, PC or mobile phone, the applications are very fast and theyre very customisable. Furthermore, the applications are distributed virally: literally by social networks, by email. You wont go to the store and purchase them. Thats a very different application model than weve ever seen in computing. Cloud computing has already started to take off; witness the growing number of people who have

Web 3 will be Web 3D within the next three to five years, says Australian entrepreneur Bob Quodling, whose 3D virtual world, Mycosm, is slated to launch at the beginning of 2009. William Gibsons famous cyber-punk novel Neuromancer debuted in 1984 and predicted a 3D virtual world that has inspired many internet entrepreneurs. The webs two biggest virtual worlds Second Life and World of Warcraft have decidedly different mindsets, but both have attracted corporate attention, particularly Second Life, with companies such as IBM, Dell, Intel even Telstra, setting up a presence in this virtual world. The Web3D Consortium suggests that in the coming decade, the Web will transform into a

Not everyone is excited about Web 3.0. Oxford University Professor Jonathan Zittrains new book, The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It, predicts a scenario involving more locked content, increased filtering, ever-expanding copyright laws, and ever-diminishing privacy. Its a bleak outlook; one that was trumped by a group calling themselves iPower, whose early 2008 video predicted the End of the Internet in 2012. Every significant internet provider around the globe is currently in talks with access and content providers to transform the internet into a television-like medium: no more freedom, you pay for a small commercial package of sites you can visit and youll have to pay for separate subscriptions for every site thats not in the package, the group states. Although their video was widely distributed, iPower lost credibility with many viewers when much of the video focused on the presenters ample cleavage. Despite the inherent freedom of the net, many commentators note that allowing unfettered control of the physical manifestation of the internet (whether through government or corporate control of phone and cable lines) will ultimately make the whole network vulnerable.
The end of the internet: where to go when theres nowhere else

And while Web 3.0 is bearing down upon us and we cannot really imagine the internet that our children will access in a decade there is still a Web 1.0 site that remains as relevant today as when it first launched. At www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm, surfers are advised: Thank you for visiting the End of the Internet. There are no more links. You must now turn off your computer and go do something productive. Go read a book, for petes sake.

71