Even as we battle to get to grips with Web 2.0, operators and telcos need to brace themselves for the changes Web 3.0 (or the semantic Web as it is often called) will bring.
Web 2.0 is characterised by the delivery of applications across the Web and has led to a huge growth in user-generated content via channels such as blogs, wikis and social networking sites. These services and content are thus becoming commoditised at the same time that ISPs, telcos and VOIP operators are facing lower ARPUs from the commoditisation of their traditional services.
In order to protect themselves from this commoditisation, service providers need to increase the value-add of the services they provide. Methods of doing this include moving from the provision of basic business VOIP services to unified communications that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of clients' business processes as well as making the content and services they provide more useful and thus revenue-generating.
Web 3.0 supports this by using ontological languages such as OWL to develop domain-specific ontologies, thus turning the Web into a database of structured and reusable marked-up machine-readable data accessible by intelligent agents without human intervention.
The development of these ontologies is a massive task that will require the assistance of communities of domain experts. Agreement must first be reached on a standard language in which to write these ontologies after which the domain-specific ontologies need to be developed. Witness the difficulties the healthcare industry faces in implementing systems for the unique identification of patients and providers, let alone the implementation of medical terminologies and standards to facilitate the semantic (machine to machine) interoperability of clinical and administrative information across healthcare information systems.
The Web's role as a database in Web 3.0 will by necessity require ubiquitous high-speed anywhere, anytime connectivity.
Nigel Sinclair Thomson is a healthcare and unified communications consultant.
The Web's role as a database in Web 3.0 will by necessity require ubiquitous high-speed anywhere, anytime connectivity. This will support the growth of fixed and mobile broadband services offering not only high-speed downloads but also high-speed uplinks.
A successful Web 3.0 will also depend upon the demise of walled gardens as well as the maintenance of net neutrality in order that users can access the most relevant content, regardless of where it lies. Whether service providers will allow their clients to choose the value-added services or content they require (even if this requires a fair premium to be paid) as opposed to unilaterally choosing which content and services will be accessible by their users remains to be seen.
History tells us that we are perhaps asking for too much to expect the former, not only at the service provider level but also at the national level given the restrictions imposed by certain countries on their citizens' access to controversial information.
Web 3.0 will endeavour to continue the role of Web 2.0 in bringing applications and information to resource-constrained environments such as developing nations. Ironically, however, given that these environments suffer from a lack of the required high bandwidth and ubiquitous access to the Internet to support Web 3.0, as well as some developing nations' restrictions on open access to information and services across the Internet, we might well find that Web 3.0 prolongs the digital divide rather than removes it.
* Nigel Sinclair Thomson is a healthcare and unified communications consultant.
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