WEB 3.0
The Web is entering a new phase of evolution;"Semantic Web" is used as a synonym for "Web 3.0", though its definition may vary depending on whom you ask. Many believe that Web 3.0 is the "next big thing" but there only lies commodities as to just what that might be. . It will be an improvement in the respect that it will still contain Web 2.0 properties while continuing to add to its ever expanding library of applications.
Web 3.0 will primarily focus on dramatically improving the functionality and usability of search engines.
The term was coined by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium ("W3C"), which oversees the development of proposed Semantic Web standards. He defines the Semantic Web as "a web of data that can be processed directly and indirectly by machines."
Tim Berners-Lee originally expressed the vision of the semantic web as follows:
I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A 'Semantic Web', which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The 'intelligent agents' people have touted for ages will finally materialize.
— Tim Berners-Lee, 1999
It extends the network of hyperlinked human-readable web pages by inserting machine-readable metadata about pages and how they are related to each other, enabling automated agents to access the Web more intelligently and perform tasks on behalf of users.
These technologies include the Resource Description Framework (RDF), a variety of data interchange formats (e.g. RDF/XML, N3, Turtle, N-Triples), and notations such as RDF Schema (RDFS) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL), all of which are intended to provide a formal description of concepts, terms, and relationships within a given knowledge domain.
Let us consider the example as: You've decided to go see a movie and grab a bite to eat afterward. Booting up your PC, you open a Web browser and head to Google to search for theatre, movie and restaurant information. You need to know which movies are playing in the theatres near you, so you spend some time reading short descriptions of each film before making your choice. Also, you want to see which restaurants are close to each of these theatres. In total, you may visit dozen Web sites before you're ready to head out the door.
Instead of multiple searches, you might type a complex sentence in your Web 3.0 browser, and the Web will do the rest. In our example, you could type "I want to see a funny movie and then eat at a good restaurant. What are my options?" The Web 3.0 browser will analyze your response, search the Internet for all possible answers, and then organize the results for you.
Its technology trends are:
Ubiquitous Connectivity
- Broadband adoption
- Mobile Internet access
- Mobile devices
Network Computing
- Software-as-a-service business models
- Web services interoperability
- Distributed computing (P2P, grid computing, hosted "cloud computing" server farms such as Amazon S3)
Open Technologies
- Open APIs and protocols
- Open data formats
- Open-source software platforms
- Open data (Creative Commons, Open Data License, etc.)
Open Identity
- Open identity (Open ID)
- Open reputation
- Portable identity and personal data (for example, the ability to port your user account and search history from one service to another)
Conclusion
On the whole,"Web 3.0" will be more connected, open, and intelligent, with semantic Web technologies, distributed databases, natural language processing, machine learning, machine reasoning, and autonomous agents.
