Web 3.0

While the focus of Web 2.0 (see related term) is on social networking, social bookmarking and media sharing, with the special accent on users’ creativity, interaction and production of different content for the web, a new trend in the World Wide Web has emerged, based on semantic web technologies and distributed databases: Web 3.0. Web 3.0 features a growing tendency of increasing machine-readable contents on the web and therefore providing more intelligent search and automatic collection and interpretation of data (Aghaei et al., 2012). The new trend focuses on data and links between them, the so-called linked data sets (Aghaei et al., 2012), interpreting the Web as a giant Database and allowing computers to organise online data and draw conclusions from them (Varlan, 2010).

The Web 3.0 consolidates semantic web technologies and knowledge representation applied on the top of the web, powerful enough to reason about data, with the social computing platforms that allow exchange of data among humans and machines as well as between them (Varlan, 2010).

Aghaei et al argue already a tendency of a new phase - Web 4.0, which represents the symbiosis between computers and humans (Aghaei et al., 2012). An example of possible Web 4.0 applications are powerful user interfaces based on mind control (e.g. WebOS as argued in Farber, 2007). Aghaei et al argue that the web starts behaving as an operating system equipped with the possibility of highly intelligent reactions (Aghaei et al., 2012).  The Web 4.0 will enhance the quality of online relationships, content management and collaboration to a level that is considered to be intelligent (Farber, 2007).

Policy-making officials can successfully use this emerging trend of open and linked data in the web to obtain useful information about the citizens, industry and government, and evaluate the impact of different policies (De Faria Cordeiro, 2011).

Related terms: Web 2.0, Semantic technologies, Open Data, Open Linked Data, Social Media

References:

Aghaei S., Nematbakhsh M. A., Farsani H. K (2012), Evolution of the World Wide Web: From Web 1.0 to Web 4.0, International Journal of Web & Semantic Technology (IJWesT) Vol.3, No.1, January 2012.

De Faria Cordeiro, K., Machado Campos, M. L., Borges, M. R. S., (2011), Empowering Citizens and Government with Collaboration on Linked Open Data, proceeding in Workshop on “Semantics in Governance and Policy Modelling”, May 30, 2011, Extended Semantic Web Conference 2011, p. 34-37.

Farber D., (2007), From Semantic Web (3.0) to the WebOS (4.0).

Nova, Spivack (2011), Web 3.0: The Third Generation Web is Coming.

Varlan S. E., (2010), Advantages of Semantic Web Technologies in the Knowledge Based Society, Analele Stiintifice ale Universitatii "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" din Iasi - Stiinte Economice, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, vol. 2010, pp. 417-422, July 2010.