It has been more than five years since the term ‘Web 2.0’ was discussed in the O’Reilly Media conference in 2004. And now people are speculating what Web 3.0 will be like. In this article, I intend to share about my views on Web 3.0. I will first talk about some backgrounds, followed by a discussion on semantic web – a popular belief of Web 3.0.
Backgrounds
It makes sense to cover a bit history of Web 2.0. The term is commonly referred to as the use of web technologies to collaborate, share information and contribute knowledge. It is a two-way communication in which user retrieves information from the Internet, while at the same time gives something back. During the process, the Internet is enriched, generating more information to be available for everyone. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace, content sharing websites like Youtube and Scribd, blogs such as Blogger and Xanga, and more. We can classify any websites as an example of Web 2.0 as long as user-generated content plays a role in the website.
Backgrounds
It makes sense to cover a bit history of Web 2.0. The term is commonly referred to as the use of web technologies to collaborate, share information and contribute knowledge. It is a two-way communication in which user retrieves information from the Internet, while at the same time gives something back. During the process, the Internet is enriched, generating more information to be available for everyone. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace, content sharing websites like Youtube and Scribd, blogs such as Blogger and Xanga, and more. We can classify any websites as an example of Web 2.0 as long as user-generated content plays a role in the website.
Semantic Web
Web 2.0 has been very successful – users find it appealing to interact with others via the web; companies also make use of it to formulate innovative business models that generate trillions of profit. Despite the success of Web 2.0, the term ‘Web 3.0’ on the other hand still does not have a commonly agreed definition. Some people believe that it refers to the semantic web. Others refer to it as the use of artificial intelligence in web technologies. Some believe that it will be a three dimensional web, visualizing a virtual world. In this article, I will talk about the semantic web.
Computer-Friendly Webpages
Traditional web pages are designed to be read by human beings, who process the content so that they can do something useful. However, with the rapid growth of websites, information overloading is just so common. An average person is only capable of handling a small portion in the Internet. Whilst search engines can help us to search for resources more easily, it has its limitations.
To better help search engines to locate the desired information, people begin to describe information in a way that computers can better understand. For example, people label their articles with relevant tags. This is exactly the key concept of semantic web – a collection of technologies that permit computers to understand the meaning of information on the web. In addition to tags, some languages like RDF and XML are specially designed to allow computers to understand web content more easily. It is believed that as computers can understand the web content, they can assist human beings in deriving more value from the information.
Technical Requirements
Current technology can only support semantic web to a limited extent. For example, words with similar meanings (synonym) may not be interpreted as the same thing. Multimedia elements like images, videos and graphics may not be interpreted by machines. There will be a need to develop advanced analysis techniques in text, images and other multimedia elements. The techniques have to be efficient, such that they can analyze the vast amount of information on the web.
Another technical challenge is that the technology also has to deal with inconsistency in the data representation on the web. Different people write XML documents of different styles. Very often these XML documents are not readable to people other than the owner. Although there exist initiatives like the Interoperability Framework of the government, it remains a challenge as to whether developers will comply with the standards.
In addition, it is inevitable that the technology also has to deal with fraudulent data. It is not news that people often write codes to trick machines. For example, web developers may overload their websites with irrelevant tags to increase their possibly of being visited. Other might use similar techniques to trick search engines into giving them a higher ranking. There has to be a really sophisticated technology that can analyze the given information in breadth and in depth such that it can distinguish good information from bad information.
Most Important Factor – We as the Creator of Information
Although people are more willing to share information since Web 2.0, there still exists the belief of data protectionism. Users concern about privacy. Websites want to protect their own services from being taken over by those of their competitors. Companies want to prevent their ideas or business models from being imitated. As a result, people may be reluctant to express data in a way that can easily be processed by outsiders. Perhaps this is the most important barrier to overcome before we can see the use of semantic web becoming popular.
Associated Blog Topic: What is your vision on Web 3.0? What are the key technologies that will make it happen?
Associated Blog Topic: What is your vision on Web 3.0? What are the key technologies that will make it happen?
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