August 2008 Archives

I was talking to a friend of mine and he was mentioning about Web 4.0!!!!! Picture that! The market barely gets 3.0, let alone 4.0-50. Then, I read this post: Web Futures, about how Semantic Web is not as smart as it's cracked to be, because it lacks context, where by context it's meant "your tools know who you are", "what you're doing", etc. etc. The "pragmatic web", that is. Well, if it's so pragmatic, will it wash my car as well?

Seriously, it seems to me that there is an only 0.01" leap between reason and paranoia. The futurists tend to be smart guys, but not as practical. Therefore I say, I don't want to hear about Web 4.0 and above. Because that just sounds too Web 1984.0 to me.

Clearly, the semantic web/Web 3.0 has started to spill from the academic drawing boards into the mainstream. If you don't believe me, here's two pieces of proof: Entrepreneurs See a Web Guided by Common Sense article in New York Times about two years ago was the first sign of "mainstreaming" it; the second, just a few months ago in The Economist: The Semantic Web | Start Making Sense. We've gone a long way, baby!

The last, and most clearly strongest sign of this being the case is represented by Jason Calacanis's post from last year Web 3.0, the "official" definition. I will tell you why, and where I'm headed with this.But first, a word from the last:

"Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform"

I think the quote above clearly emphasizes a symptom for any meme, technology, "current" moving from toddler-stage to the early teens: identity crisis. By its being overbroad (by the way, logically speaking, this is a definitional fallacy), it shows the stage we are in right now. If I didn't know better and read the quote above, I would not have a single clue as to what Web 3.0 is.

Now, one of the reasons I am putting together the Web 3.0 Conference & Expo in October in Santa Clara, CA is because I am in search of, and need for an identity. I've been a long time evangelist, lover, and currently entrepreneur of Web 3.0, and am still amazed of how many people, companies declare themselves being "web 3.0", "semantic", etc. Of course that is a teenage identity crisis symptom, of course: the moment a meme hits the mainstream fan, everyone else adopts the tune. Shall I give examples? Alrighty then: try going to Crunchbase and enter "semantic" in the search field, then if you truly know what a semantic-based technology "smells" like, find out how many companies are listed that have nothing to do with 3.0. I won't name names because I am trying to make a point.

I think this causes a both a problem and an opportunity: the problem is that by being under-critical of who gets the name "semantic", we are deepening confusion among media tech pundits, VC's, consumers, ourselves. It dillutes the core what Web 3.0 is purported to be.

The opportunity? It shows we're long overdue for solving some definitions. We need for Web 3.0 a definition just as well embedded as O'Reilly's is for Web 2.0 (What Is Web 2.0?). This will serve as first medicinal step before we can successfully "sell" the 3.0 dream to the public at large.

Because of this, I have decided that once every couple posts, I will transform into a librarian for 3.0 (isn't Library Science the grandmother of Knowledge Representation, taxonomies, etc. anyway?), start collecting quotes from blogs, corporate and personal sites, articles, on what folks think Web 3.0 or semantic applications are. I am also accepting quotes here, so I need some help:

What is Web 3.0? How do you recognize a Web 3.0 company when you see one?

Is it because it uses: natural language processing? Ontologies? Reasoners? Logic? Machine Learning? Both logic and machine intelligence? Intelligent applications? How intelligent?

A good place to start is on the Wikipedia article on Web 3.0 and a decent beginning is in Nova Spivack's Making Sense of the Semantic Web. But how do we become clearer?

Should we care? Here's one smart answer: Guy Kawasaki on why he hates Web 3.0 monikers. I think we need the moniker for marketing purposes but only if we can do a decent job explaining it. In the end, we all want good product that makes our life easier, whether it's 2.5, 3, 3.4 or not.

Therefore I challenge you to tell me and show me: what do YOU think Web 3.0 is/should be?

Finally here! This is the blog that will track everything relevant in the semantic web/Web 3.0 world, from both a technology and business utilization perspective. I have been a "student" of this area for quite some time, and am working on a startup project of my own related to this.

What I hope to achieve with this blog is to help create a community around "mainstreaming" Web 3.0. I believe that after 7 years of promises, the marketplace (press, investment community, startups) are just about at an inflection point of larger (than academic projects) adoption. To get a little bit of background context about where I am coming from (Web 3.0 is all about context, right?) read my articles here: Where is the Semantic Web Killer App (Part 1), and here: Where is the Semantic Web Killer App (Part 2), and take a stand whether pro or cons.

Here's how it will all work out: every week I will post 3-4 comments/thoughts about the area, some technological, some "philosophical", others very business application-driven, and would like to hear from you.

Did I also mention that we are "dogfooding" the blog by using Zemanta semantic blog capabilities, that automatically generates metadata from text and is able to hook into open data? This is all about moving from the "newspaper" web to the database web. So, here we go, dive in at your own pace.