By SCOTT DEWING
Published: September 2008

THE FATHER OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB, Tim Berners-Lee, once said, “People keep asking what Web 3.0 is. I think maybe when you’ve got an overlay of scalable vector graphics—everything rippling and folding and looking misty—on Web 2.0 and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data, you’ll have access to an unbelievable data resource.”

Don’t worry. Stay with me. I said “huh?” the first time I read that too. Web 3.0 is the next emerging iteration of the World Wide Web. “What was Web 2.0 then?” Good question. To begin with, were still mucking about in the murkiness of the Web 2.0 era in which no one can seem to agree on exactly what “Web 2.0” means. Do a Google search on “Web 2.0” and the top search result is the Wikipedia entry for Web 2.0, which defines it as “a term which describes the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users.”

That’s pretty vague and Berners-Lee has countered that creativity, information sharing and collaboration are what the World Wide Web has been all about since he invented it in 1989. “I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon,” Berners-Lee said in a 2006 interview, “nobody even knows what it means.” And yet the term continues to be tossed about by laymen and experts alike (including Berners-Lee himself!). Some define Web 2.0 as big business embracing the Web as a “platform” for doing business and the resulting exponential growth of ecommerce. Others define Web 2.0 by the complex and interactive technologies that drive today’s Web. As for me, “Web 2.0” describes an era in which the the World Wide Web has so permeated human culture that it created a world in which we could no longer imagine there NOT being a World Wide Web. I think part of the difficulty with agreeing upon what Web 2.0 means is rooted in the fact that we are currently living in in its midst.

Meanwhile, without knowing and agreeing upon what, exactly, the term Web 2.0 means, the so-called experts (who have a habit of getting ahead of themselves) have begun talking about “Web 3.0”. I find this all quite humorous and ironic. The irony lies in the fact that semantics is at the heart of the next major iteration of the World Wide Web. Semantics is the study of meaning in communication. A semanticist makes inquiries into the precise meanings of words and phrases. For example, a semanticist might ask, “What, exactly, does ‘Web 2.0’ mean?”

When it comes to the Web, semantics promises to enable unprecedented exchange and interaction of previously disparate data. The “Semantic Web” as it’s been dubbed by Berners-Lee and other Web gurus, will be at the center of Web 3.0, or “the intelligent Web”. According to Berners-Lee, “The Semantic Web will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users.”

What might this look like? One simple example would be making a doctor’s appointment. As it stands, I call the doctor’s office to make an appointment. I’ve already looked at my calendar. I know what days and times would work best for me. I suggest one of those days and times. Of course it’s not available. The receptionist and I do this scheduling dance until we narrow down and settle on a time that works. With the Semantic Web, my calendar and my doctor’s calendar speak the same language and understand one another better than me and the receptionist. Software “agents” do the scheduling dance but they do it much better and much faster then notify each party of the appointment.

Perhaps the most immediate and biggest impact of the Semantic Web will be with search engines. Let’s say that with the rising price of gas, I decide it’s time to buy a Toyota Prius. I can’t afford a new one so I want a used Prius. Also, I like red so I want a used red Prius. I don’t want to travel more than 100 miles to consider the vehicle and possibly close the deal. With current search technology, I’d need to run a lot of individual searches at individual websites, aggregate the information myself and narrow down my selections the best I could. That’s four hours I could have spent out on the golf course searching for my ball in the rough. With the Semantic Web, all those disparate databases containing information about Priuses can interchange and aggregate the data that I need. My search is narrowed down by software, not by me, and maybe my golf game improves. Of course for all of that to work, information and services on the Web must be defined so that the Web is able to understand and fulfill the requests of people and machines to use and exchange content. While the World Wide Web in its current form is impressive, it’s still a Tower of Babel when it comes to data.

If properly implemented, the Semantic Web will change all of this by unifying all data with a common “language”, that is, a common understanding of what each piece of data represents. The Semantic Web promises to accomplish this through a set of design principles and a variety of enabling technologies. Currently, these include Universal Resource Identifiers (URI), Resource Description Framework (RDF), a variety of data interchange formats, and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). These technologies and standards are currently being used to provide a formal description of concepts, terms, and relationships within a given knowledge domain.

According to Berners-Lee, “The real power of the Semantic Web will be realized when people create many programs that collect Web content from diverse sources, process the information and exchange the results with other programs. The effectiveness of such software agents will increase exponentially as more machine-readable Web content and automated services become available. The Semantic Web promotes this synergy: even agents that were not expressly designed to work together can transfer data among themselves when the data come with semantics.”

The Semantic Web has the potential to radically transform the World Wide Web. Call it “Web 3.0” if you like. Once the Web speaks a common language it will be “intelligent”. Well, maybe not intelligent the way you might define it, but let’s not quibble over semantics.