Web 3.0
You have decided to see a movie and get some Mexican food afterwards. You boot up your PC, open a web browser, head to Google to search for theatre, movie and restaurant information. You want to read descriptions of films playing in the cinemas near you and want to find out which restaurants are nearby. All together, it may take you about 20 minutes or longer to get all the information you need and head out the door.
Some Internet experts believe that the next web generation – Web 3.0 will make tasks like these much faster and easier. Instead of typing in keywords in several searches you could type in a whole sentence or two into your browser and the web will do the rest.
“I want to see a funny movie and then have some good Mexican food” - Your browser will search the Internet for all possible answers and then organize the results for you. But that's not all. Many Internet experts believe that Web 3.0 browsers will act like a personal assistant. As you search the web it will learn what kind of person you are and what you are interested in. The more you browse the web the more information the browser gets about you.
Web 2.0
Even though it has been in the news for a long time now, not everyone knows what Web 2.0 means. Here are the characteristics in brief:
- Visitors can make changes to web pages. Amazon and many other companies, for example, allow visitors to post product reviews and comments. Wikipedia lets everyone change, edit and improve articles.
- You can link yourself to other users. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are popular because they have made it easy for users to find each other and stay in touch.
- The web community can now share content. A YouTube member, for example, can create a video clip with his cell phone and upload it to the website for other users to watch.
- The Internet can be accessed not only on your computer but, but by other devices as well. Cell phones, video games and television are a few such examples.
So while people are still making use of web 2.0 what will Web 3.0 be like? In which ways will it be different from the web we use today?
Web 3.0
While Web 2.0 uses the Internet to make connections between people, Web 3.0 will use it to make connections with information.
Today, search engines are not able to understand what you are looking for. They look for search terms and keywords that you have typed in. If, as an example, you type in the word “Mars” some results will be about the planet Mars, while others will show you information about the chocolate bar.
A Web 3.0 search engine will not only be able to find the keywords, it will also interpret the contents. It will therefore only return results that are relevant.
While some experts think that Web 3.0 will be a further development of the hypertext language HTML others think that it will rely on a completely new language.
Semantic Web
Tim Berner-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He created it as an interface for the Internet and a way for people to share information. The future web is what he calls the semantic web.
Right now the web is geared for humans. Although a search engine can scan the web for keywords it cannot understand how they are used on the page.
The semantic web will change all this. Browsers will scan and interpret web pages with programs called software agents. They will search for collections of information called ontologies. They are files that define the relationships among a group of terms.
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Words
- access = the right to log on to or use
- agent = like a program
- although =while
- boot up = start
- brief = short
- browse = go through
- browser = a computer program that finds information on the Internet and shows it on your computer screen
- characteristics =features, quality of something
- community =neighborhood
- connection = link
- contents =here: all the data that comes over the web
- create = make
- define = name, classify
- description = what something is about
- development =growth
- device = other communication machines
- even though =while
- file =information on a computer that you save under a certain name
- further = more, additional
- gear = to be prepared for
- head out = go out
- improve = to make better
- in touch = in contact
- interface = a way in which you see the information on your screen
- keyword = a word that you type into the computer so that it will search for the word on the Internet
- make use of =use
- personal assistant = here: a program that helps you organize things
- popular = liked by many people
- possible = likely, potential
- relevant = important
- rely on = depend on
- review = an article that gives an opinion about something
- scan = to go or search through very quickly
- search engine = a computer program that helps you find information o the Internet
- semantic = about the meaning of words
- several = many
- share =to have or use something with other people
- social networking site = website that people can log on to and write to and chat with other users
- task = something that must be done, job
- therefore = as a result, so
- upload = to load onto the Internet