Over the weekend the NY Times ran an article about “Web 3.0”.  It was worth reading, and provided some good thoughts on where the Internet, particularly as an information appliance, was going.  The short synopsis is that various start ups and engineers are working to provide mechanisms for us to get contextual information from the Web – moving away from using the Web through key word searches (“pizza Mclean delivery”) to semantic searches (“I want a deep dish pizza that is as good as the one I had in Chicago last month, and I want it delivered to my house in McLean in 30 minutes”.).  In other words, they are trying to make the Web and its data more useful.

Without question the ability for people to get data organized the way that they think will be an accelerator for adoption of information technology and continue to more tightly integrate people and data into the Web.  There are real implications here for privacy, technology dependency, social fragmentation, educational disparity and opportunity and the further flattening of the world, among other weighty issues.  Over time, I am sure that we’ll address many of those issues together. But, for today, I want to limit myself to a more mundane matter – the article’s gist that the so-called “semantic web” was the next stage in the development of the Internet and the Web – that it will be the basis of “Web 3.0.”

Certainly, there is a growing sense among the technocrati that “Web 2.0” is over and done.  I don’t necessarily ascribe to that view – what we are seeing now rather is that the innovations that have been labeled as “Web 2.0” are becoming adopted by the mainstream.  Inevitably this will result in missteps and me-too business plans, and there will be a shake out and some investors will loose money and founders will fail.  However, that does not mean that the innovations of  Web 2.0 will not become part of the fabric of the Web and how data is presented and consumed.  It does, however, leave the question as to where the next wave of accelerating innovation will come from.

Recently, I was struck by a number of apparently unrelated events.  Right now there exist on the Internet various on-line, immersive community activities, where users interact with each other through an interactive three dimensional world.  Some of these are “games” – where you form teams across the Internet through an Xbox 360 to blow up aliens, meet warlocks, etc.  But, some of these activities are more than “games” and are immersive worlds where users spend significant time just existing.  Check out Second Life, if you get a chance – it’s an immersive world, where people log on just to hang out.  Think about that – going on line to spend a few hours in an artificial world just because you like to spend time there – sort of like going to the beach or the mall – except it’s online.

And, the line further blurs as these artificial worlds become places to engage in commerce.  You are now seeing more and more product placements in online games.  Perhaps you might have heard that last month Reuters opened up a news bureau in Second Life.  Or, if you missed that, perhaps you saw Wired Magazine’s travel guide. One thing that has struck me is that there are apparently real economic transactions occurring on Second Life – people are buying and selling virtual goods – there is actually a real estate land grab going on in this completely artificial world hosted on a server.

I also ran across an interesting start up last week – 3B – a self described tool to make your Web browser a three dimensional, immersive experience.  Think of Neo’s experience in the “gun room” in the Matrix, or walking through your search results and looking at them like store fronts.  I will be interested to see how 3B does, since its vision is not to change the nature of the data presented to the user, but to dramatically change how he interacts with it.

And, I think that is really the point – it’s not the data, its how it is presented.  When you think of the semantic web, an interactive community or a three dimensional Web browser, the commonality is that ultimately they are about removing barriers between data and consumption.  And, when you think about, that’s what Web 2.0 is about too – allowing people to use data as part of a seamless community, rather than in independent silos.

So, again, whether you label things as Web 2.0, Web 3.0, or Web 10.21, the underlying trend is there – a narrowing of the barriers between data and utility.  As we watch this trend continue to play out, there are a number of things that we can anticipate with some certainty:

• Demand for bandwidth will exceed supply, as new technologies for interaction will consume more bandwidth than currently utilized methods.  For example, if everyone tried to currently consume all of their visual content through the Internet (i.e., no cable, on air or satellite TV) there probably is not sufficient bandwidth currently available.  Imagine how widespread utilization of three dimensional environments like Second Sight would consume bandwidth.

• As data manipulation becomes more complex (ultimately “semantic” or visual data presentation is more computer intensive), demand for hardware innovations will continue.

• Data is more useful through context and reference.  In other words, the more data there is the more useful any particular data point is.  This will raise large issues as to privacy, to be sure, as users of data seek to bridge pockets of data, and capture new data, into a larger coherent whole. And, because these trends will result in a more useful experience for users, there will be a subset of society that will value privacy less than utility.

• There will be boom and bust cycles, since the technology available will not always immediately match data usefulness demands.  For instance, many of the currently successful Web 2.0 businesses are business models that “failed” in the late 90s because there was insufficient technology and bandwidth to provide the service to consumers.

• The line between what is “real” and virtual will blur, as people pursue not only recreational but also economic activities in immersive online worlds.  If you think that TV has had an affect on cultural attitudes and social activities – imagine the affect of targeted immersive communities and experiences. 

So, with respect to the NY Times and others, I am not spending a great deal of time trying to figure out how to label the current manifestation of larger trends.   I’m trying to figure out how the cycles will play out.