Web 3.0 : An Introduction

Just in case you missed it, the web now has version numbers. Nearly three years ago, amid continued hand-wringing over the dot-com crash, a man named Dale Dougherty dreamed up something called Web 2.0, and the idea soon took on a life of its own. In the beginning, it was little more than a rallying cry, a belief that the Internet would rise again. But as Dougherty's Silicon Valley start-ups—and blogs are already abuzz with talk of the Web's next generation.

Web 3.0 : An Introduction

Web 3.0: Tim, Lucy, and The Semantic Web

Web 3.0 :The Other Semantic Web

Web 3.0 :Semantics and Search

Web 3.0 : A Web Beyond Words

Web 3.0 : Tomorrow's Web, Today

Web 3.0 : An Idiot's Guide to Web 3.0

Web 3.0 : Questions of Semantics

Web 3.0 : Look, Ma, No Keywords!

Web 3.0: Versions 4, 5, 6...

Just in case you missed it, the web now has version numbers. Nearly three years ago, amid continued hand-wringing over the dot-com crash, a man named Dale Dougherty dreamed up something called Web 2.0, and the idea soon took on a life of its own. In the beginning, it was little more than a rallying cry, a belief that the Internet would rise again. But as Dougherty's Silicon Valley start-ups—and blogs are already abuzz with talk of the Web's next generation.

To many, Web 3.0 is something called the Semantic Web, a term coined by Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the (first) World Wide Web. In essence, the Semantic Web is a place where machines can read Web pages much as we humans read them, a place where search engines and software agents can better troll the Net and find what we're looking for. "It's a set of standards that turns the Web into one big database," says Nova Spivack, CEO of Radar Networks, one of the leading voices of this new-age Internet.

But some are skeptical about whether the Semantic Web—or at least, Berners-Lee's view of it—will actually take hold. They point to other technologies capable of reinventing the online world as we know it, from 3D virtual worlds to Web-connected bathroom mirrors. Web 3.0 could mean many things, and for Netheads, every single one is a breathtaking proposition.