Web 1.0 – The
shopping carts & static web
Experts call the Internet before 1999 “Read-Only” web. The
average internet user’s role was limited to reading the information which was
presented to him. The best examples of this 1.0 web era are millions of static
websites which mushroomed during the dot-com boom (which eventually has led to
the dotcom bubble).
There was no active communication or information flow from consumer (of the
information) to producer (of the information).
According to Tim Berners-Lee
the first implementation of the web, representing the Web 1.0, could be
considered as the “read-only web.” In other words, the early web allowed users
to search for information and read it. There was very little in the way of user
interaction or content contribution.
The first shopping cart
applications, which most e-commerce website owners use in some shape or form,
basically fall under the category of Web 1.0. The overall goal was to present
products to potential customers, much as a catalog or a brochure does — only
through a website retailers could also provide a method for anyone (anywhere in
the world) to purchase (their) products.
Web 2.0 – The
writing and participating web
The lack of active interaction of common users with the web lead
to the birth of Web 2.0. The year 1999 marked the beginning of a
Read-Write-Publish era with notable contributions from LiveJournal (Launched
in April, 1999) and Blogger (Launched in August, 1999). Now even a
non-technical user can actively interact & contribute to the web using
different blog platforms. If we stick to Berners-Lee’s method of describing it,
[…] the Web 2.0, or the “read-write” web has the […] ability to contribute
content and interact with other web users. This interaction and
contribution has dramatically changed the landscape of the web […]. It has
even more potential that we have yet to see. […] The Web 2.0 appears to be
a welcome response to a web users demand to be more involved in what
information is available to them.
This
era empowered the common user with a few new concepts like Blogs, Social-Media
& Video-Streaming. Publishing your content is only a few clicks away! Few
remarkable developments of Web 2.0 are Twitter, YouTube, eZineArticles, Flickr and Facebook.
There are many different views
of Web 2.0 depending on who you talk to.
Web 3.0 – The
semantic executing web
This in turn leads us to the
rumblings and mumblings we have begun to hear about Web 3.0[…]. By extending
Tim Berners-Lee’s explanations, the Web 3.0 would be a “read-write-execute”
web. However, this is difficult to envision in its abstract form, so let’s take
a look at two things […]that will form the basis of the Web 3.0 — semantic mark-up
and web services.
Semantic
markup refers to the communication gap between human web users and
computerized applications. One of the largest organizational challenges of
presenting information on the web was that web applications weren’t able to
provide context to data, and, therefore, didn’t really understand what was
relevant and what was not. [..]. While this is still evolving, this
notion of formatting data to be understood by software agents leads
to the “execute” portion of our definition, and provides a way to discuss web
service.
A web
service is a software system designed to support computer-to-computer
interaction over the Internet. […]. Currently, thousands of web services are
available. However, in the context of Web 3.0, they take center stage. By
combining a semantic markup and web services, the Web 3.0 promises the
potential for applications that can speak to each other directly, and for
broader searches for information through simpler interfaces.
Web 3.0 – how, why and when.
Kate Ray has made a good documentary on web 3.0, and explains really why we
need a semantic web and what the semantic web is all about.
Are we there yet??
It seems we had
everything we had wished for in Web 2.0, but it is way behind when it comes to
intelligence. Perhaps a six-year-old child has/had better analytical abilities
than existing search technologies! Keyword based search of web 2.0 resulted in
an information overload. The following attributes are going to be a part of Web
3.0: Contextual Search
- ·
Tailor made Search
- ·
Personalized Search
- ·
Evolution of 3D Web
- ·
Deductive Reasoning
WEB 4.0
Web 4.0 is still an underground idea in progress and there is no exact
definition of how it would be. Web 4.0 is also known as symbiotic web. The
dream behind of the symbiotic web is interaction between humans and machines in
symbiosis. It will be possible to build more powerful interfaces such as mind
controlled interfaces using web 4.0. In simple words, machines would be clever
on reading the contents of the web, and react in the form of executing and
deciding what to execute first to load the websites fast with superior quality
and performance and build more commanding interfaces
Web 4.0: Ultra Intelligent Electronic Agents
Interaction between humans and machines is the driving force
behind 4.0. We might still well be in Web 3.0 but 4.0 is coming and it’s coming
fast. Facebook recently launched Agent M, an artificial agent on chat.
And we are all aware about Siri.
These systems are getting
smarter by the day and it’s not just web. Cars and home systems are getting
smart at an exponential rate. There’s no need to imagine driverless cars,
we are already there!
Web 5.0
Web 5.0 will be about the (emotional) interaction between
humans and computers. The interaction will become a daily habit for a lot of
people based on neurotechnology. For the moment web is “emotionally” neutral,
which means web does not perceive the users feel and emotions. This will change
with web 5.0 – emotional web. One example of this is www.wefeelfine.org, which maps
emotions of people. With headphones on, users will interact with content that
interacts with their emotions or changes in facial recognition.
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