Sunday, October 21, 2007

Topic for Research Paper for MMIS 620

The Emergence of web 3.0: the Future of the Internet

The first implementation of the web is called web 1.0, and marks a monumental change with the way that businesses operate. According to Berners-Lee, this would be considered a “read only web”. This meant that there was information on the internet that could be displayed by businesses and found by individuals around the world. This was the era of the dot com boom, where all kinds of internet businesses sprang up to sell their goods and services. However, unlike web 2.0, there was very little user interaction. With the coming of web 2.0, sites like Myspace.com or Flickr, become customizable by the customer, and the web is now transferred into “read-write” according to Berners-Lee’s definition. This new concept of users being able to contribute content is changing the way businesses operate once again. We have actually just begun to experience the benefits of web 2.0. Although nobody knows for sure what the future will look like, the next generation of web technology is coined web 3.0, and according to Berners-Lee’s definition, will bring the ability to “read-write-execute” to the web. Currently search engines can retrieve data, but have no ability to understand the semantics of the data being queried. With the future, applications will be able to understand data and retrieve queries based on the data’s validity according to the semantics of the search. New complex graphics in 3d and artificial intelligence will also contribute to the user experience on the web. This paper will attempt to examine current and future trends with web technology.