8/12/2019 itmag-web3jul08
1/2
The future of the Web is a hot topic. Sowhats in store for it
over the next decade?
Web 3.0
the answer, very simply, isWeb 3.0. Yes, in case youhadnt
noticed, the Web nowcomes complete with versionnumbers. Were
currently in
the second decade of the Web, morepopularly known as Web 2.0,
afterDale Dougherty, one of the co-foundersof OReilly Media, came
up with theterm in late 2004. After 2.0, it naturallyfollows that
there must be a 3.0 thatsnewer and better. o speculate on whatmay
be the dening features of 3.0, onemust rst understand what 2.0 is
allabout. 2.0 mainly refers to how bothprogrammers and end users
interact
with the Web. While 1.0 was denedby content that was mostly
static andpublished by a few select publishers,
What Is In Store For The Web?
1. Semantic WebMany people, including the
father of the Web, im Berners-Lee, believe that this will be
thenext big innovation. Semantic
Web essentially views the Web asa large globally-linked
database.
Te problem with data on the Webtoday is that it is all in H
ML(Hyper ext Markup Language),
which is all about syntax, and notsemantics. Tis makes it hard
formachines to understand and domore meaningful computationsusing
this data. Te semantic
Web is about enabling machinesto understand the data better,and
to do useful things with thisunderstanding. One application ofthe
semantic Web would be a muchricher search. Rather than
searchingonly for plain old keywords as wedo today, search
algorithms will beable to make use of the fact that aparticular
term is a city or anotherterm is a song name.
Addingnatural-language queries to thesemantic Web yields
interestingqueries that are simply not easy toserve today. For
example, you willbe able ask a query like Which
Indian presidents hailed from theSouth? and directly get the
answerin your rst link. Another possibilityis to be able to search
for medianot with keywords, but with othermediafor example, to nd a
songsimply by humming it.
2.0 is about end users becomingpublishers through blogs,
wikis,social networking sites and whathave you. Te best example to
helptell the difference is EncyclopediaBritannica or Encarta vs
Wikipedia.In addition to enabling end userpublishing, user
interactivity,different media, and richer userexperiences through
AJAX, Flash,and more recently Silverlight, are allimportant parts
of 2.0. And, froma programming model perspective,
we have entered the world of Webservice application
programminginterfaces (APIs) and mashups/composite sites, during
this phase.
So whats next? Here are somepossibilities.
i.t. | www.itmagz.com | JULY 2008 | 31
