Web Evolution

John Markoff reports in the New York Times about the evolution of the Web, with claimants that they are defining Web 3.0. As if Web 2.0 (oreilly, wiki) was settled, Arthur C. Clarke predicted a “Global Library” for 2005 in 1958. His chart of the future that runs to the year 2100 from his book Profiles of the Future. In the chapter Obsolescence of Man, he infers that all this Interneting is one great techno-rehearsal to build the ultimate robot and posits the logical endpoint of the Internet is a ”world brain” appearing in 2095.

I don’t yet buy Web 3.0 which seems to be a rehash of the artificial intelligencers. Not as all as exciting as the ad-hoc Web 2.0 rebirth of the Internet. Even for Doug Lenat’s Cycorp, a 3.0 claimant, his thesauric common sense research first begun while at MCC, fails to recognize that there is a cybernetic epistemology, an objective language, and protocol whereby people and machines have to declare and project their representation. (similar ideas today are the Ontology Web). I came to these conclusions while working on General Magic ’s Telescript in 1994. It was clear that to create an Internet-based electronic trading place that buyers and sellers needed a digital blanket. More exactly a “catalog markup language” and protocol to first define agent profiles and describe objects. All necessary agents of both buyer and seller to meet in digital “buildings” and perform autonomous transactions. (Kind of an “agent-enabled” one click shopping).

I like the inferred beginnings of Web 3.0  in Scill’s Web 2.0 Buzz bar – but 3.0 must be much more! Scill’s requirment for translated world languages and world-orientation is healthy though not yet scientific. Web 2.0 was refreshing, even though there are no “standards” as in Web 1.0 which had rich notation – HTML, a protocol – HTTP, and an architecture for a Web server and Web browser to meet. – mrb

At any rate I am  working on a table to classify the evolution of the web with a larger frame of reference.