2012 is here. What next for the web?

What will happen to the web in 2012? Since the advent of HTML5 we’ve seen the semantic web growing. So I guess we’ve arrived at web 3.0, right? What’s next, then?

Enter web 4.0… The concept has been around for ages now, much to the liking of web 2.0 and web 3.0 (web 2.0 started being talked about in 1995…) and the basic notion about web 4.0 is that the web as a social movement will reach it critical mass and erupt from that to the event where communities/society will take over the information as a whole. On the other hand, some say web 4.0 is the stage where 3D web will emerge finally as a part of semantic web 3.0. How those two are related, if they are related at all, I really have no clue.

However, I believe web 4.0 to be the one were people do really take charge of all information. We’ve been watching it for a couple of years now, with the conflicts in middle eastern countries, riots, natural disasters being reported live from thousands of cell phones around the world. And we also began taking notice of bad media and disinformation provided by mainstream media exactly because of these thousands of “eyes” capturing the truth.

So, regardless of what technical advances may occur (with CSS3, SVG, HTML5 and other technologies), I believe that web 4.0 will be the one to bring back “power to the people”. Martin Luther King would be proud.

 

Until web 4.0 is upon us, let’s stick to what we’ve got: http://semanticweb.com/