Last week I wrote a blog about how defining what stage the Web is in is a very difficult thing to do due to the Web's constantly evolving nature. Putting the Web into boxes does have the advantage of allowing us to identify what set of technologies puts the Web in a particular stage whether Web 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0. I also outlined the stage of the Web we're firmly in now, Web 2.0 and how it is all about social networking, users generating content and generally the move from a read-only Web to a read-write web. This week I'm going to look at one of the main features we can look forward to as we progress to Web 3.0, the next generation Web.

The image below will give you a good comparison between the different "versions" or stages of the Web's development:

Widespread implementation of Web 3.0 technologies is set to occur between 2010 and 2020. The big features of the next generation of Web are said to be the semantic web, personalization of the Web (See iGoogle), more intelligent search engines, behavioral advertising, and the move of web sites to become web services amongst other things. Seeing as these topics require quite a bit of explaining I won't be covering them all in just this one blog post but will finish off Web 3.0 over the next 2 or 3 blogs.

Now let's see what the semantic web is all about.

The Semantic Web...

The semantic web is one of the next logical evolutionary steps of the Web. It involves computers being able to attribute meaning (out of context) to all the data available on the Web, making it possible for computers to understand what you are looking for.

For example, say you're looking for a movie to watch at the local cinema and perhaps go eat some nice Italian food afterwards. You ask your search engine, “I want to see a good comedy then eat at a good Italian restaurant, what are my options?". The search engine will then look at what movies are currently showing at your nearby cinema, which ones are funny, which got the best reviews, look at what Italian restaurants are near the cinemas and also look at reviews of the restaurants. The search engine will then organize all the information on a single page so that you can easily make an informed decision. 

This would work a lot better than current search engine technology which simply looks for keywords or tags without fully understanding what you're looking for.

Stumbling Blocks Towards The Semantic Web...

The semantic web sounds very very good in theory; there are however some big obstacles that will need to be overcome before the semantic web becomes reality.

The biggest obstacles are human nature and language itself. Understand a language is something that depends not only on knowing what words mean and how syntax orders words into something that's understandable. Understanding language involves being able to get meaning out of context, being able to adapt to rapid changes in language (especially slang) and having an extensive knowledge of the world. 

Human nature also comes into play. For example, human's have a tendency to lie. Human's can intentionally put information into their websites to mislead the crawlers that search for meaningful semantic data.

Take a look at the slides below for more information on how the semantic web works.