Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and the Web of Tomorrow
Web 1.0 is your grandmother's Web. Or perhaps your mother's Web. It is the Web of the late 80's and early 90's, where everything was just hyperlink connected to another hyperlink. It was literally just for information, nothing more. If it couldn't fit on one page, it wasn't worth it. There was no interactive content, no games, no music. It was just as is: a page for you to look at. Or perhaps click onto another page.
Web 2.0 sought to change that.
It seems that Web 2.0 has achieved it's overall goal. The idea that Web 2.0 is for people to participate and to communicate. We've gone almost further than that. With things like blogs, being able to comment on virtually everything, Skype, and so on, we are without a doubt, participating in a constant flow of Web interaction. To further this point, take a look at the website for stores like Sears or Macy's. You can buy whatever they have in stock, while also receiving comments and ratings based on other shoppers' experiences. It's innovative, yet perhaps scary, that nearly everything has a section for comments and reviews by the general public.
Looking at things like newspaper websites as well, we can usually tell what kind of agenda--if any--a newspaper company has based on the people that comment on a given story. Aside from reading the story itself, taking a look at the comments is an easy way to tell who is reading what and what we they think. Which, is why I find it a bit scary. Web 2.0 is an all-inclusive way of interaction without ever really seeing anyone face-to-face. As stated it is an "open source" program, available to all.
Web 3.0, as we move into it, I think will bring about a smarter and more helpful way to comment and interact. That is to say that, with Web 3.0 and the Internet accessible from just about anywhere and everywhere, we can properly do our own research when looking into other things people have said. I feel that Web 3.0 has more educational value than 2.0. I feel that with the help of Google and other such engines, Web 3.0 teaches that not everything is or should be the first link you click on.
Furthermore, I think that this is the direction that Web 3.0 should be moving in. Many people take the first piece of information they hear as fact, without any research or credibility, and spread it in a very "2.0" fashion. I think that when you get a piece of information, you should use the resources made available to you by Web 3.0 to find more information, build upon it, and figure out a truth that is at least somewhat undeniable.
Unfortunately, super engines like Google do tend to give you the top result based on other peoples feedback and how much site traffic it gets. You need to be very specific and narrow with your research at times. A small price to pay to get to the truth.
The Facts: Web 2.0 and 3.0
The Web, and thereby the Internet, was created for very few purposes. For military, academic, and scientific purposes. The web, however, has become a big part of our lives, offering those same old benefits, but adding a few new ones. Connection, being the biggest benefit hands down.
Web 2.0 was, and still is--for now--the Web most people know and love. Web 2.0 saw the start of amateur webpages adding clickable links and navigation to their websites. It saw the addition of comments sections. Perhaps most importantly, it saw the addition of social media. Things people know and love today, like Facebook, Tumblr and Blogger, all came from the advent of Web 2.0. Community is the name of the game when it comes to Web 2.0, and there is no better example of the community that comes from Web 2.0 than Wikipedia.
The "original" Web, as some put it, is Web 2.0 and is the way we've seen the internet since the 1990s. With new and innovative styles of webpages, visually and technologically. This further enforces the idea that Web 2.0 is working and will soon evolve. People can barely remember a time where browsing the Internet was simple, easy and perhaps even boring. Now, people interact with everything including the Internet itself and the Internet interacts back.
“Web 3.0, a phrase coined by John Markoff of the New York Times in 2006," The website "Lifeboat" references. "Refers to a supposed third generation of Internet-based services that collectively comprise what might be called ‘the intelligent Web’." The intelligent Web. A semantic Web. It is portable, easy to understand people, and easy for people to understand it. There is no guesswork with Web 3.0, especially with the use of "behavioral advertising."
Basically, Web 3.0 moves us more into a artificial intelligence style. A way that the internet can communicate with people, while they communicate with one another and also the internet. Examples of this are already starting to appear, like when someone visits a website looking for underwear and Facebook gives you ads for all kinds of underwear websites.
This, in a nutshell is Web 3.0
There are arguments about whether we are in Web 3.0, or if we are still creating it. It might be better off to call the current "Web" era something along the lines of "Web 2.5". A web where people interact with one another, yet the internet and the Web have begun to interact as well, giving us it's "thoughts"--for lack of a better word.
The Web is an ever evolving state. The further people get out of "Web 2.5" and into Web 3.0, the faster people will be looking at the future and Web 4.0. Though, that may be getting a little too far into things too soon.
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