Web 3.0?

What's Web 3.0? Wait, what's Web 2.0?

While I was watching my new and beautiful Season 2 of Star Trek - TNG (if you don't know what TNG stands for, or who acts in it, you're missing out ladies), I caught myself thinking about what Web 2.0 is and what it means to us non-technical nerdy types. And these weren't two completely unconnected events. I was thinking what number .0 we should ascribe to Data the android - Web 200,000.0?

Like any good researcher I decided to Google Web 2.0 and came across the TechRepublic. As the name suggests these guys are a republic of techies who seem to know what they're talking about. But even techxperts were having a bit of trouble defining Web 2.0. Techie Ramon Padilla most aptly described it as:
(a) just a buzz word that means nothing at all
(b) a term that means whatever the user thinks it means
(c) the Web as it exists today
(d) the technology of the future

I'm going to agree with Mr Padilla and say that (c) is possibly the most logical choice. The words Web 2.0 as I understand them just describe all the things I can now do on the webnet: Google; buy books off Fishpond; stalk facebook; giggle at Chocolate Rain on Youtube; chortle at the newest Lolcats pictoreel.

Of course, Web 2.0 incorporates all those other mind-boggling things like social connectivity, the advancement of online services and the next evolutionary step towards an artificial all knowing (and seeing) thing.

And Web 3.0? My technologically superior housemate (he's a Government software programmer) flippantly refers to Web 3.0 as the 'semantic web'. And after half an hour of discussion of semantics, I will refer to Web 3.0 as 'the web that will understand and interpret and adapt to all my stupid questions like "how do I open a can of tuna without getting fish on my fingers?"

The other Idea I gained from our discussion is that Web 3.0 will focus on big businesses whipping out their marketing guns, profiling the masses using social networking and communities and killing them with their superior advertising-targeting skills.

And after thinking about Webs .0 and how Silicon Valley and the Universities are working towards making the Internet think back at me, even Star Trek is starting to seem a little dated. The wondrous centralisation of technology in the Federation database and Data's incredible mega-processing speed don't seem three or four hundred years in the future, really. I bet there's already a Google robot hiding in a gondola out back.