Although by some standards the World Wide Web is a new technology, it is rapidly evolving and growing. Many World Wide Web experts and engineers, including Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the Internet), believe that semantic web is the next big step. Web 2.0 was the most recent Internet generation and its capabilities are still yet to be fully seen. This newer generation of Internet use makes the Internet a computer platform and offers online applications that you can use from any computer. Web 2.0 has also seen the rise of social networking web sites like MySpace and Digg which feature user generated content. Time Berners-Lee has never fully backed the idea of Web 2.0 since some of these capabilities have been present since the creating of the Internet.
Even though the development of Web 2.0 is still ongoing, many experts like Berners-Lee are envisioning a newer technology that is truly revolutionary and something not available on the World Wide Web today. Semantic web is now being coined “Web 3.0.” This new technology would revolutionize the way information is queried and available on the Internet. The content on the Web would be produced in two different formats. One format is directed towards users and is basically how you view the Web today. It is rich with graphics and text and is tailored to the Internet user. The revolutionary half of the new Web 3.0 is set up so that information and content will be understood, interpreted and used by software agents. Setting up this information in a way that is more computer friendly will allow the computers to find and organize this information more easily.
With the combination of human intelligence and a search engine, Internet users can find just about anything they are looking for by doing a search. If you were interested in finding a 5 megapixel camera for $300, you could browse the Internet to locate such an item. You may have to view a dozen web sites to get an accurate view of all your available options. There are even some product search engines that will allow you to search for this item and find pricing from competing stores. With semantic web, the web sites that carry these items would produce information that is readable by computers so the software that is reading this information can organize it in a much better way. When you search for the terms “5 megapixel digital camera” you may or may not get what you are looking for. Instead of viewing digital cameras for sale, you might end up viewing reviews, some photographer’s web site talking about his camera, or some random page that just happens to contain those words. In these web sites, the text is not associated to each other and doesn’t always produce the desired results. With semantic web, the web site creator can associate a digital camera with its specifications, price and other information. All the information about this product will be bound together so that it can be easily read and located. This information can be catalogued more easily based on what its author says it is. The information can be labeled as product information for camera XYZ, camera reviews, etc. The current World Wide Web doesn’t specify what type the document really is.
Semantic web and the idea behind Web 3.0 seems truly remarkable but other experts believe that it is unlikely or could be many, many years away. The opposition to Web 3.0 claims is isn’t very feasible and there are limitations to the software that would also be required to realize this technology. There are also issues about privacy and censorship that would need to be addressed if Web 3.0 ever truly took off. Along with these issues, Web 3.0 would take longer to become popular because it would require web site creators to produce two different documents for the same thing; one document for human readers to view and another for computers and software to view and index information.
The technology and idea of Web 3.0 and semantic web is not too far-fetched and could be realized in the upcoming years. Although it will definitely take some time and change for people, semantic web could revolutionize the way we distribute and track information on the Web. The Internet is already an amazingly powerful creation that has put more information at our fingertips than the world has ever known. Semantic web and Web 3.0 will organize this information and make it even more efficient to find information on just about anything you can imagine. With some strong support and evolving technology, the semantic web will be the next big thing in the Internet industry.
