2010's Key Evolution: The Next Generation Web

London, UK - 3rd January 2010, 22:40 GMT

Dear ATCA Open & Philanthropia Friends

[Please note that the views presented by individual contributors are not necessarily representative of the views of ATCA, which is neutral. ATCA conducts collective Socratic dialogue on global opportunities and threats.]

To build something new, one may have to destroy what one was doing before. That’s one thing that not enough of us are willing to do until we are forced to! Being driven to the brink of collapse, before the survival extinct kicks-in, is a well known trait of humanity confirmed by history. How can the 21st century be any different? Here's perhaps why...

As the Web is swelling with more and more data, the predominant way of sifting through all of that data -- keyword search -- is beginning to break down in its ability to deliver the exact information we want at our fingertips. You may have noticed that keyword search is already delivering diminishing returns on your favourite internet search engines and it takes longer and longer to find what you are really looking for.

At a certain point, with billions upon billions of web pages to sift through, keyword search just doesn’t work efficiently anymore. Simply put, it’s a needle-in-the-haystack problem, with the haystacks just getting bigger and bigger every second of every day.

How would you like the world wide web to help you intelligently mine the information you need with a minimum of surfing? At the same time, how would you like to do away with the mountain of user IDs and passwords that one needs to access today's myriad web applications?

The solution is called "Semantic Web", "2010 Web", "Web 3.0", "Next Web", "Real Time Web" or Whatever you would like to call it... Perhaps, Toothpick Bird... given all the internet twitter! The more important question is: Why bother with the next generation Web? Here's why...

Next Generation Web

2010 Web 3.0+ is essentially a set of standards that, as they are broadly adopted, will help computers extract meaning from the flood of data on the Web. Instead of a brute software approach, it puts intelligence into the data. All one needs to use that data is carried by the data itself. Even dumb software works with smart data! That is an approach that scales no matter how many billions of Web pages are created and added to the existing set.

2010 will see the emergence of Web 3.0+, the chief goal of which is to link the vast resources of the world wide web, open up architectures and create hooks so that web developers -- and users -- can access data from multiple sources using a single interface. Some search engine applications are already venturing into this territory by providing real-time search tools that mine information on social networking sites. A growing number of Web 2.0+ sites at present are not only acknowledging the existence of other web-based communities and their data but openly providing users with a way to link resources.

Web 2.0 was all about social networking, community building, and the empowerment of the individual information creator. We have seen what that can do through sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We have also seen the limitations of this model, chiefly in the degree to which such "cyber airports" or mega sites create data silos that require users to hop from one to the other in the course of gathering information. While Web 2.0 brought the world interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centred design and collaboration, the mi2g Intelligence Unit (mIU) and the ATCA Research and Analysis Wing (A-RAW) believe that the next generation of the web, or "Web 3.0+" promises more thoughtful recommendations, free quality services, intelligent (semantic) searches, and information that’s no longer random data, but tailored, highly intuitive and delivered in real time.

Evolutionary Web Trends

1. Social network profiling and preference-aware mobile applications;
2. Intelligent mapping and navigation;
3. Personal full-service assistants and organisers;
4. Global collaboration with cloud computing storage and sharing;
5. Audio, video and music online co-creation, sharing, storage and access;
6. Social media synopsis and real time search arbitrage via intermediaries;
7. Semantic search engines with decision making tools and data visualisation; and
8. Unified yet distributed organic web strategies and presence.

Together, these eight evolutionary web trends might even make enough of a difference to metamorphose our global civilisation's collective consciousness towards sustainability and longevity just in time for the next major socio-economic shift, which is beginning to take place post The Great Unwind and The Great Reset. If so, they may provide greater and more flexible employment opportunities, resilience in the face of adversity, recycling alternatives and non-linear design and development capabilities. Welcome to self-assembling, trans-national, intelligently searchable, self-propagating and extremely dynamic community structures in 2010. The world as we have known it throughout history is now beginning to change forever, yet again!

[ENDS]

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Best wishes