- Portability: With changes in the nature of popular browser devices, specifically, the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, websites must consolidate dynamic content in ways that enhance ease-of-use and enable the user to process and manipulate data faster and more efficiently.
- Semantic Web: With available online content increasing at an exponential rate, it becomes imperative that browsers, search engines and advertising companies adapt in order to provide content contextually. To do this, machines must be able to actually understand and categorize the ‘meaning’ of any given content. Currently, this kind of contextual placement is achieved through human-initiated ‘filing’ systems, such as tagging and metadata. These methods should at best be viewed as a stopgap, given that both tagging objects with keywords and inserting metadata into files are time-consuming tasks, which will become even less practical as the volume of information expands. Theoretically, Web 3.0 should operate more organically, in the sense that organization or ‘understanding’ of human content should be automated, yet still reasonably accurate. Technologies such as facial recognition software and increasingly clever online AIs should make this critical transition easier than previously assumed.
- User Behavior/Engagement: Along the same lines as Semantic Web is the concept of content and focus that changes depending on the browsing, chatting and spending habits of the user. With many of these systems already in place on websites like Amazon and Netflix, it seems fairly inevitable that just about every website, device, plugin and browser will eventually begin to keep track of the user’s preferences in just about everything. Movies, music, games, apps, dining or clubbing recommendations and literally everything else. We are not in 3.0. As users, we are 3.0. Anything available online will be customized to suit the user’s personal preferences. On the bright side, the smarter and more effective machines get, the less annoying and pandering this will probably become. On the downside, eHarmony will go out of business around 2017, because Google will be able to locate a scientifically correct soul mate for anybody in 2.699 seconds, and then provide them with the best options for movies and fine dining. For free.
- Advertainment: This concept is really amusing and actually kind of exciting, even though it harks back to 1940’s television shows, wherein the product placement was done explicitly by the cast, in bizarre 3-minute cutaway segments once an episode. The basic idea here is that there is actually no reason for Ads to be hideous and boring and badly made. They can actually be just as entertaining as any other content. This can already be seen in some places, prominent examples being the Ads bracketing the Super Bowl –which are actually so popular that they are treated as premium content in themselves (to view any of these Ads on YouTube or Hulu, it is necessary to sit through some other, less interesting Ad first.) – or the BMW Film Series produced in 2002, which feature smart storylines and prominent actors in a series of action vignettes highlighting the performance of various BMW vehicles. Advertainment is really less of a technical breakthrough than it is a simple paradigm shift. Either way, it stands to reason that we will see more smart advertising of this nature as the web becomes more personalized, streamlined and uncluttered.
- Advertainment: This concept is really amusing and actually kind of exciting, even though it harks back to 1940’s television shows, wherein the product placement was done explicitly by the cast, in bizarre 3-minute cutaway segments once an episode. The basic idea here is that there is actually no reason for Ads to be hideous and boring and badly made. They can actually be just as entertaining as any other content. This can already be seen in some places, prominent examples being the Ads bracketing the Super Bowl –which are actually so popular that they are treated as premium content in themselves (to view any of these Ads on YouTube or Hulu, it is necessary to sit through some other, less interesting Ad first.) – or the BMW Film Series produced in 2002, which feature smart storylines and prominent actors in a series of action vignettes highlighting the performance of various BMW vehicles. Advertainment is really less of a technical breakthrough than it is a simple paradigm shift. Either way, it stands to reason that we will see more smart advertising of this nature as the web becomes more personalized, streamlined and uncluttered.
- Individual Focus: This is perhaps the most prominent instance of Web 3.0 departing from – rather than expanding on – technologies popularized by Web 2.0. Agarwal theorizes that Web 3.0 will actually move away from some of the community-focused content currently seen everywhere online. This will be replaced by a more personalized experience, focused specifically on the individual. Examples of how this change might occur would be the implementation of websites that promote smaller but more active friend groups. This would be a trend away from the wild excesses currently seen on sites like Myspace and Facebook, where people often collect multiple thousands of friends, most of whom they have never met in real life and will never actually interact with at all. This behavior - presumably stemming from the human desire to turn every quantifiable element of their life into some kind of pissing contest – is ultimately neither entertaining or satisfying, and has left many users of popular Web 2.0 platforms feeling jaded and – ironically – disconnected. Obviously, Web 3.0 will not depart entirely from this kind of social networking, but will probably maintain social environments that steer users towards a more meaningful and useful interpersonal experience online, and away from nonsensical trolling and Machiavellian social engineering.
All of this conjecture about Web 3.0 leads to the conclusion that although the technologies used in the future Internet will be undeniably complex, the philosophies driving their implementation will be much simpler. Concepts like personalization and humanization in the context of a global network, or the all-importance of the idea as opposed to the structure.
In order for this philosophy to flourish, web technologies must focus not on their own cleverness, but rather on finding the simplest and most efficient way to spread and successfully communicate these ideas.
In order for this philosophy to flourish, web technologies must focus not on their own cleverness, but rather on finding the simplest and most efficient way to spread and successfully communicate these ideas.
Robert Burleson, June 2011
LINKS
TED talk, 2010
TED talk, 2010
http://www.zefrank.com/ted/2010.html
Amit Agarwal (2009). Web 3.0 Concepts Explained in Plain English.
Amit Agarwal (2009). Web 3.0 Concepts Explained in Plain English.
