Web 2.0 has come to revolutionise information exchange today like no other service has, and it has done so by only facilitating two-way interaction: more than anything, this idea has made people feel welcome into the many decision making processes around the globe. The sense of belonging at more and more events and in more and more houses has accentuated the feeling that we are truly part of a bigger world, a world that can still afford to stop whatever it is doing and give us a hear. With Web 1.0, all of this was never possible. All that the internet user could expect was what the creator of the websites had to offer. No changes could be made, no changes could be personally effected. The internet, till then, remained something of a marketplace where those who were looking for anything at all had to make do with what was already there. The touch of personableness that could set off improvement, and therefore evolution of the system as a whole, was disallowed not by preference, but by choice. With the advent of JAVA and AJAX, and simultaneously the concept of open sourcing, Web 1.0 had the option of staying behind and getting modified into a better experience – but if that happened, it owuldn’t be Web 1.0 after all. More than being just a technical and architectural upgradation, Web 2.0 is the birth of a newer experience. When I first heard the term from a friend of mine here in college, I surmised – partially correctly – that it would have to do with the way everything was created. You must have worked with both HTML pages as well as… well, those which invited greater participation. When I came across them, I thought that developers had finally woken up to a newer way to build things. It turns out, the web revolution that began then inspired builders to not only improvise, but also think of everything up from scratch. In deciding to leave behind convention as it stood then, newer boundaries were defined – boundaries that continue to be pushed today to accomodate fresher ideas. The touch of personableness that Web 1.0 denied was the turning point. In permitting the user to walk into the web space as an individual, the creators also ingeniously permitted the walking in of newer ideas. From being a marketplace where the stalls were already up, the world we see online today is as much a subconscious realisation of our own ideas as it is a central location to facilitate the manufacturing of those ideas. The stale uniformity that pervaded the internet was replaced by personality, and going online to do something evolved into going online and meeting people. Now, that’s what I’d call a revolution.
Could there be a Web 3.0? It is possible. Although it is hard to say whether people will tire of the 2.0 experience too, a 3.0 experience will be awaited because you and me will always be curious as to know what it feels like it. Co-founder of the Web 2.0 Conference, Tim O’Reilly, has made a list of five websites (Google Voice Search on iPhone, Gracenote’s CDDB, AMEE Smart Grid, NASA/CISCO Planetary Skin, IBM Smarter Planet) that point to something past the 2.0 experience. The one common attribute of the above apps are that they all involve the use of sensors. Although we know today the comfort of using a keyboard and mouse to navigate through our digital workspaces, they could very well be expelled in the future in favour of sensors behaving as transducers between thoughts and gestures on the one hand, and intentions and desires on the other. Just like the need to stand out catapulted into the 2.0 experience, the need to get smarter could catapult into the 3.0 one. The web is no longer a separate entity as it used to be: we have fed it with enough of ourselves to not call it one among us. Just as humanity progresses, so should the web. Even if we don’t choose to facilitate this evolution, it will have to happen. Our only limit is our imagination.
Clathration Therapy 