Web 3.0 Or How To Kill Simplicity

Software is complex, for a variety of reasons – the domain problem, the plethora of unknown factors and the developmental process. One of the jobs of the software community is to simplify the outcome of all this for the common man. However, recently we have become real good at killing the simplicity! Here comes Web 3.0 while each of us is still lurking in the dark in different directions wondering about Web 2.0!

Version Numbers For?

3.0 might sound good times for some, new features and new behavior. The versions work really well for products, because they indicate a certain set of features, they indicate compatibility, and more importantly they tell the user exactly what to install. Version numbers are used to curtail the features so that product development is manageable.

What is this fad of assigning version numbers to Web, Media, Desktop, Office and each and everything that is changing! With these the best thing that the version numbers can do is project them as products to the common man, which probably is the worst thing. They are not products, they are infrastructure, communication, concepts. The next best thing it does, is to create confusion and an air of exclusivity for the software community. Which probably some relish because it gives them a marketing buzzword! It seems like everyone is bored with Web 2.0 and want to jump to Web 3.0 to find more ways of making business models and making money.

Or if it really works well, we should have News 2.0, Radio 2.0, Humanity 2.0, or Life 2.0! I wonder the conversations when version numbers would be flying around. Now Semantic Web is being touted as Web 3.0. Were semantics not stressed on earlier? Is the software community not aware of its benefits? Does Web 3.0 now imply that every website that has to qualify should have semantic markup?

Hell For Users

I have faced questions like if Web 2.0 is a new product from Microsoft. This is a good example of confusion that 2.0 has created, which we want to extend with 3.0 now! Version numbers work well within the software community, because they imply things that the software community can understand. Web 2.0 is an effort to bring back interest in Web after the dotcom bubble burst. Web has not changed, our ways of using it has changed out of learning from mistakes.

Version numbers can create hell for users. Even with products version numbers sometimes create confusion. How many people really want to get bothered with 7.0 or 2.0 when working with browsers. They are more worried about doing their task.

We keep wondering about different architectures, different technologies and put all our effort in making our website unique from others. Web 2.0 is often associated with AJAX, which has been applied without assessing whether it was required or not. This has probably earned money for some but is not necessarily what the use needs. We have a mesh of websites that finally become inaccessible to the common man who wants to work with the basics, get connected and get information.

Back To The Basics

This hype is killing the genuineness and overshadowing the real task at hand. I think we need to go back to the basics – what WWW meant to be. The versions that we have created are only the application of different technologies and methodologies. Web is really what it was, it has not changed. We have to keep evolving our techniques to make it useful. That does not mean we start versioning the Web!