Web 3.0

Article Title: Web 3.0 Demystified: An Explanation in Pictures for the Rest of Us
Author: Deltina Hay

This article defines the different phases of the Internet. I, for one, am consistently reminding my students, staff, and parents about the beauty of Web 2.0 as a collaborative tool. With Web 3.0 on the horizon, it is important as educators to know about this next phase.

Author Deltina Hay describes Web 1.0, the Internet that many of us first used, as being “flat”. It is like an online Hypercard, linear in some respects, but also able to go from one “card” or page to another. Content was creator-driven, rather than user-driven as we know now. Metadata was within the make-up of the website, and search engines would consider the metadata when giving the user search results.

Web 2.0 is a more collaborative Internet. Rather than sending users away from a website to find their content, it is pulled within the site via aggregators. Users tag and comment on content, and often communicate among themselves. Rather than looking for metadata imposed by a webmaster, search engines now have to consider tags and interactions among users.

Web 3.0 brings “semantics” to the forefront. This allows machines to understand relationships and relevancy that a human would be able to figure out. Mashups, widgets, cloud data, search engines, users, and aggregators are all within Web 3.0, the “Web of Data”, so says the author. In this way, machines which have no understanding of the human need for aesthetics can manipulate and adjust content for the single user.

I feel kind of behind the times that I keep bringing up Web 2.0 to people. I guess I need to make Web 3.0 part of my vocabulary!