Is time running out for Web 3.0?
Posted: June 15, 2009
hourglass
By Moria Byrne
The key to Web 3.0 is that it is multi-faceted and involves not one product but many. The goal is to control not only how data is accessed and shared but how it is organized. The problem is that many companies aren’t prepared to share their information because it is still static data. Most data is still produced to search for HTML or XML coding. Programmers need to change their structure and programming language and mark the data with RDFs and microformats.
Peter Sweeney, CEO of Primal Fusion, describes Web 3.0 as an “industrial revolution.” “Web 3.0 industrialization takes content manufacturing to an entirely different level. Instead of users manually creating content, machines automate the heavy lifting,” Sweeney says. “Consumers simply push the buttons and get stuff done. Think spinning wheels versus textile mills.”
Web 3.0 is a collection of technologies that consist of the semantic Web, linked data, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, mashups, & APIs. These tools enable people to access information online in a more meaningful way. The challenge: the context is always changing because the content is always changing and interacted with in a variety of ways: blogs, audio, video, mobile phones (texting).
Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google Inc., believes Web 2.0 introduced a new way of building applications. Web 3.0 will be exist in parts and allow the rapid exchange of information in ways Web 1.0 and 2.0 couldn’t. Yet, the change won’t be a disruptive innovation. Web 3.0 will cater to a different consumer with different needs than network surfers.
“How we access information is a mess,” says Hank Williams, CEO of KloudShare. “It’s difficult to get the big picture when there are buckets of information. It’s difficult to capture information the way it is currently put together.”
KloudShare is a graph database platform implemented as a Web service. (KloudShare will be released this fall.) The service was created with the average online consumer in mind. The service structures data in order that users can find information on say elephants or information that has a particular characteristic of elephants.
“Our goal as a business is to help businesses and individuals organize their information more effectively right now,” Williams says.
Web 3.0 is also about organizing information in a more intuitive and intelligent way. Tools are being invented that will enable users to find information and network based on natural language. One example is Thought Networking by Primal Fusion. Thought Networking organizes the information researched by using the user’s thought as a blueprint. For instance, if you are looking for information about climate change, the program will collect content and publish conversations related to climate change. Then, you can take that information and republish it in a document, website or RSS feed.
For example, if a user wanted to start a salt water taffy business in Florida and he wanted to make sure no one else in his immediate region was creating the same product, he would search under salt water taffy company on the Web. Under the concept of natural language processing, a search based on the context of the words would work with platforms that find the information like Wolfram Alpha and Google Squared. Instead of sorting through anything written related to salt water taffy, natural language processing would eliminate any unrelated content by asking questions of the user first. Users can find and are able to act on that information more quickly.
Watch a presentation of how Primal Fusion works
Linking data is another popular tool enabling users to find information much more quickly. Linking data is the best way to expose, share and connect information on the Semantic Web. Data is linked on the Semantic Web using URIs and RDFs. For example, DBPedia can link information on cancer to LinkedCT. LinkedCT can link information on recently completed clinical trials proving soy lowers women’s chances of breast cancer to DailyMed. Then, DailyMed may link any articles discussing the success of clinical trials to PubChem.
Yet, globally linked data derives meaning through context. Without the participation of businesses and their willingness to share information, Web 3.0 will move slowly. Information needs to be linked for there to be a collective thread connecting ideas like thoughts from one person to another. “The difference in the quality and scale of the data is as dramatic as the difference between a directory and a search engine,” Primal Fusion’s Sweeney says. “One is bounded; one is not.”
In a natural language format, words can be picked up based on context rather than keywords. It might take time for companies to change how their databases process information, but the technology industry’s argument is that time is running out for businesses.
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