Web 3.0: The Rise of the Machines

The worldwide economic downturn has pretty much sounded the death knell of Web 2.0, and not a moment too soon, and probably a year or two too late. Speaking at last month’s Web 2.0 Expo seemed almost silly, like “We’re still doing this?” How many social networks do we really need? (Or just use Ning and make as many as you want.) While the properties of Web 2.0 are powerful and will continue to resound, the meme of Web 2.0 is likely over, and good riddance.

Now, I’m not going to claim that all the problems of the Web have been solved; far from it. But I think the web as a platform is stable and powerful enough now that the challenges ahead are mostly those of content: now that we’ve got this thing, what is it really good for? What new kinds of content can emerge? Will the characteristics of Web 2.0 make their way into some truly interesting, collaborative, web-centric content? I hope someone, somewhere is working on that.

But more importantly for product designers is what Web 3.0 will bring us, because the next web is all about the machines: hooking up our until-now “dumb” devices to the network and to each other. The next web will be one of placing humans in context with their objects and visa versa. We’ll use the data our objects provide to better observe and manage them, and the energy they require to own, operate, manufacture, and disassemble. Our objects, which over the last 60 years have become more and more devalued and disposable, will suddenly become once again rich with meaning.

The next Web will also be about the machines making better use of human data, either through making use of the emerging semantic web, or via embedded sensors embedded to make them more contextual and adaptive. Our devices will be better able to understand where they are and the role they play, and adjust themselves accordingly based on human needs and desires, sometimes unspoken. The internet will be the platform for moving and sharing this data, so that collectively, all can benefit.

Of course, as Adam Greenfield amply demonstrates in his book Everyware, we’ve seldom been faced with a more complex and, frankly, frightening design challenge such as this one. We must make sure that people (and our values) are part of this internet of things so that we don’t end up with powerful, networked machines out of control. Or, perhaps worse, powerful, networked governments out of control, with access to all of our personal data.

Even though downturns are always painful, from them the seeds of the next big thing always seems to arise. I’m looking forward to it.

This was written by Dan Saffer. Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2008, at 1:56 am. Filed under Product Design 2.0, Technology. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.