The invention of hypertext has been the most revolutionary thing since two previous technologies before: the printing press and the alphabet. Combined with computing and the Internet, we have seen a new world represented by the World Wide Web that has transformed entire industries in its mere 19 15 year existence.
The web caught our imagination in the nineties, which became the Dot-Com bubble. Several years after the bust, optimism reawakened when the Google machine listed on the stock exchange – heralding a new era dubbed “web2.0”. This era has now been recognised in the mainstream, elevated by the mass adoption of the social computing services, and has once again seen the web transform traditional ideas and generate excitement.
The web2.0 era is far from over – the recent global recession however has flagged though that the pioneers of the industry are looking for something new. As the mainstream is rejuvenated by web2.0 like the Valley was not that long ago, it’s time to now look for what the next big thing will be. Innovation on the web is apparently flattening. Perhaps it has – but the seeds of the next generation of innovation on the web are already here.
Controversy of the meaning of web2.0 – and what its successor will be – should not distract us. We are seeing the web and associated technologies evolve to new heights. So the question is not when web2.0 ends, but what are we seeing now, that will dominate in the future?
My view:
• The mobile web. The mobile phone is now evolving into a generic entertainment device, becoming a new computing device that extends the reach of the internet. First with the desktop computer, and then with the laptop computer – new opportunities presented themselves in the way we could use computers. The use of this new computing platform will create new opportunities that we have only scratched the surface.
• The 3D web. Visit second life, the virtual world, as you quickly note the main driver of activity is sex and that it’s just a game. However, porn and games have spearheaded a lot of the innovation of technology in the past. The 3D web is now emerging with four separate but related trends: virtual worlds, mirror worlds, augmented reality and lifelogging.
• The data web. Data has now become a focus in the industry. The semantic web, eventually, will allow a weak form of artificial intelligence that will allow computer agents to work in an automated fashion. Vendor Relationship Management is changing the fundamental assumptions of advertising, with a new way of how we transact in our world. Those trends, when combined with the drive for portability of peoples data, is having us see the web in a new light with new potential. Not as a collection of documents, and not as a platform for computing, but as a database that can be queried.
So to get some discussion, I thought I might ping some smart people I know in the industry on what they think: Chris Saad, Daniela Barbosa, Ben Metcalfe, Ross Dawson, Mick Liubinskas, Randal Leeb-du Toit, Stewart Mader, Tim Bull, Seth Yates, Richard Giles as well as you reading this now.
What do you think is currently in the landscape that will dominate the next generation of the web?
“database that can be queried…” easy to say… but WHO can do it?
I think it makes sense, as you have, to focus on what already exists that will evolve to be central to the new landscape.
I agree with everything you’ve suggested here, though the 3D world will be augmented by haptics and gesture control. Another fundamental point, that you’ve written about elsewhere, is how the right content gets to us. While this is part of the current landscape, absolutely in the future we will expect to get the content we want without effort.
I’ll be musing more on this - it’s time to get this discussion more structured as it currently often devolves into talk of Web 3.0…
@SexySEO: the semantic web technology stack is RDF (to store data) and SPARQL (to query data). In effect, it using the technologies like in traditional databases (RDF’s creating structure like how tables do) and SPARQL being the query language.
So if everyone structures their data in a common way, and it’s open on the web, anyone can query that dataset like one massive database because it’s all linked as if to be one database.
@Ross: Looking forward to it! I genuinely think we are not in web3.0 of whatever territory - we are simply seeing web2.0 maturing as now the mainstream is adopting it (and enterprises especially). Any attempt to do so, as I alluded above, is by reference to the economy. After all, what distinguises the different ages in our world was by the factors of production: Agricultural age wealth was generated by land; industrial age wealth was generated by machine capital; information age wealth in generated by knowledge/human capital.
What should distinguise dot-com, from web2.0, for the “next generation” web is by monitoring how the economy progresses. It may be worth doing some analytics of investment and capital flows through the nineties and noughties, to assess this. Cultural change, as flagged by web2.0 is not only hard to measure, but subject to hype (afterall, I remember 2002 and 2003 and 2004 and 2005 and 2006 all being the year of social networking). Economic changes should be how we define these periods.
@Elias just 1 little stupid Q
What is semantic web? Your definition, pleassse 
The semantic web is the set of technologies that structure content on the web in such a way, that they can be interpreted by computers and queried in a decentralised way. It’s structuring content in a certain way, rather than it being freeform - converting information into data that can be broken up and used in other ways. Think of a newspaper article with baseball games and weather information. If the information in that article coud be structured, that weather information could be used again in another context ie, on tennis games as well.
The semantic web is boring - it’s what you can do once you have those semantics when it gets interesting. It’s like telling people to stop using Microsoft word and to start writing articles in Excel - because that way, every word in that piece of content can be referenced.
Quick thoughts;
* Social networks are still a technology, not a business.
* Browsers on phones will explode mobile apps. Localisation will be tested and won.
* Data portability will become an underlying technology and people will use it like breathing.
* Peer-to-peer will finally become the norm for distribution after Joltid open source their technology.
But the big winner….
E to C collaboration - Enterprises actually engaging with their customers.
Wow!!! Elias, attaboy
your Word Exel analogy actually is much deeper than it seems as it reveals the crutial problem of semantic web namely the origin of ontologies. If ontologies are originated by authours we will have to deal with keyword stuffing version 3.0. Alternatively if ontologies are result of community effort it is stupid to believe that we’ll ever make avarage users write their texts in Exel insted of Word 
I reckon websites will provide functionality.
Data will be housed within a few large networks.
These large networks will have various degrees of openness, but most of this will be shared within.
We are seeing websites as moving from (often being) a vague product to (often) being more of a service, this will be further cemented as the large networks act as platforms for more ambitious things to blossom within. The “more ambitious” aspect is related to the fact that these larger networks will have standards within themselves.
As some of the personal computer’s components become less of a necessity, browser-based/off-site internet usage/browsing/etc. can become a reality through which large entities with their own standards (and the efficiency for creation/innovation/reaction/etc. that results) and services that adhere to their guidelines/restrictions can blossom.
If that doesn’t make sense, or seems like nonsense, please accept my apology. Otherwise, cheerio!