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Aren’t we all waiting for the
next big thing, hoping to catch it first?
Something new and exciting, to follow blindly and believe in religiously,
and to brag about to people still unaware. And in that sense, what is more novel than the
next generation of new technologies such as the World Wide Web?
Although not
yet fully explored by everybody, the term Web 2.0 is becoming aged, and some
people can’t wait to get on to the next step: Web 3.0. Since this term has entered the market and industry
conversations, now the media wants an answer to what
it entails. Many experts have tried, but it seems
a forced exercise, assigning meaning to an already existing description of
something yet to come.
But why stick with the
existing? Does the sequential characteristic
of the term Web 3.0 mean we can expect an evolution instead of a
revolution? And will ‘Web’ still be
appropriate, even though we have changed from a two dimensional network with
fixed desktops to a virtual system directly linking to the real world with
mobile users accessing it from different locations via different devices?
While we are living in a
fast-paced, changing world, growth of language seems to stay behind. Instead, the meaning of words has to stretch
for us to be able to communicate about new technologies and phenomena - a negative development that is often
overlooked by the industry that introduces us to them. Take for example the iPhone, a novelty that unites
the features of audio and visual devices plus giving you access to the Internet
and your email. This has clearly less to
do with the phone as we knew it or with the word ‘phone’ that ancient Greeks used to
refer to voice. Besides the badly chosen
name, it is also a missed opportunity for Apple to create a new category. Why not think different?
Let’s see what the future
will bring, and equally important, what it will be called. Web 3.0 is not here yet. Until the
next generation of the World Wide Web emerges, any suggestions as to how to
describe it correctly are more than welcome.
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