时下的Web 3.0无聊的博客风暴
Tim O'Reilly
10.04.07
如果说Web 2.0火爆异常那么Web 3.0又如何？对于那些有抱负有想法的工程师们这已经变成一个周期性的主题了，他们总是希望把自己的创业当做下一次大潮。Nova Spivack开始把不为所知的Radar Networks 描述成Web 3.0， 但是现在 Jason Calacanis又提出自己的定义，并作了巧妙的修改以此来对应他自己的mahalo.com。结果大量的嘲讽如期而至。
现在，反而是我本人很犹豫是断言：“Web 3.0是个愚蠢的想法。”因为Web2.0过去遭受过同样的批评。然而我还是看到两个重要的不同：
所以对于创业者，我想说如果想赋予Web3.0真正一些意义我们需要看到一些针对上一代技术真正的超越。他们可能又是泡沫、复苏或者类似的什么，但应该有一些本质的不同的东西。我喜欢Stowe Boyd对这一问题的思考：
“就我个人来讲的确感受到某些超越Web2.0的东西，它们是真正的进步。想象一下没有浏览器的Web，打破文档的概念，或者真正的应用和信息的混合。那才是Web3.0应该是的样子，但我打赌我们该称它其他什么。”
我同意Stowe的观点。绝对有一些新事物在蓄势待发，但我敢打赌应该称它们其他什么而不是Web3.0。而且很有可能它会比Web更广阔、更普遍深入，因为激光技术、传感器、语音识别和很多其他新技术把计算机技术变得比今天更深入我们的生活。
但是任何变迁中下一个要把握的潮流都是建立在广泛基础上的，有很多经过考验的点，每一点都展现了飞跃的一方面。任何说他创业的公司就代表了下一次革命的人都是过早的。
我发现我最恼火的是那些用web 2.0的定义来定义Web3.0的做法（像一些集体智慧应用的新形式），他们通过坚持Web2.0就是一些Ajax、Mashup等一些客户端技术来标榜自己已经做到一些突破。比如，看一下Nova Spivack今天回应Jason的文章：
“Web3.0我认为在Web的第三个十年（2010-2020）时才能给出最好的定义，这期间几个关键的技术会得到广泛的应用。他们中最主要的会是RDF和正出现的语义Web技术。尽管Web3.0不是语义Web的同义词（那期间会有几次其他重要的技术更迭），他仍然会被语义学极大地影响。
在我们把重点放在前端（Web2.0主要是像Ajax、标签等一些前端用户体验的更新。）的十年之后，Web3.0应该是一个我们更新Web后端的时代。”
我有些同情Nova为了尝试挽救他的Web3.0概念把它绑在一个时间表上而不是某个特定的技术（Win95什么的），但是我发现说Web2.0是一个关于前端技术的说法是如此可笑以至于让整个想法蒙羞。Google是一个杰出的Web2.0成功例子，它是后端的。每一个主流Web2.0厂商都是后端的。他们都是在构建能驾驭网络效应以此来增强人们的体验的应用工具——而且你只能通过强大的后端做到这一点。Nova说语义Web会在一些网站中越来越多这是对的，但我不认为这一点是一定的。
就像我在Nova博客里写的评论：
"Alas, I find the Web 3.0 arguments as clear evidence that the proponents don't understand Web 2.0 at all. Web 2.0 is not about front end technologies. It's precisely about back-end, and it's about meaning and intelligence in the back end.
The real difference between Web 2.0 and the semantic web is that the Semantic Web seems to think we need to add new kinds of markup to data in order to make it more meaningful to computers, while Web 2.0 seeks to identify areas where the meaning is already encoded, albeit in hidden ways. E.g. Google found meaning in link structure (a natural RDF triple); Wesabe is finding it in spending patterns.
There are sites (geni.com comes to mind) that create narrow-purpose cases where people add structured meaning, and I think we'll find lots more of these. But I think that the big difference is in the amount of noise you accept in your meaningful data, and whether you think grammar evolves from data or is imposed upon it. Web 2.0 applications are fundamentally statistical in nature, collective intelligence as derived from lots and lots of input at global scale.
See my various posts on Web 2.0 vs. the Semantic Web.
Meanwhile, Web 2.0 was a pretty crappy name for what's happening (Microsoft's name, Live Software, is probably the best term I've seen), so I don't see why we'd want to increment it to Web 3.0. But when people ask me what I think Web 3.0 will be, I don't think of the semantic web at all.
What are things that will give a qualitative leap beyond what we experience today?
I think it's the breaking of the keyboard/screen paradigm, and the world in which collective intelligence emerges not from people typing on keyboards but from the instrumentation of our activities.
In this sense, I'd say that Wesabe and Mint, which turn our credit card into a sensor telling us about tracks we're leaving in the real world, or Jaiku, which turns our phone into a sensor for a smart address book, or Norwich Union's "Pay as you drive" insurance, are more early signals of something I'd call "Web 3.0" than Semantic Web applications are.
Let's just call the Semantic Web the Semantic Web, and not muddy the water by trying to call it Web 3.0, especially when the points of contrast are actually the same points that I used to distinguish Web 2.0 from Web 1.5. (I've always said that Web 2.0 = Web 1.0, with the dot com bust being a side trip that got it wrong.) "
Nova回应了我的这个评论，他通过邮件发给我。在征得他的同意后我贴在这里：
"I would actually say that I agree with much of what you state in your comment on my post. EXCEPT for one thing. The Semantic Web is completely orthogonal to the issue of collective intelligence. It can in fact be used as a better backend for existing "Web 2.0" folksonomies, or it could be used for expert systems -- it is not just a top-down framework.
It would not be technically correct to say that Semantic Web is not about statistics or that it is not about deriving structure from what is already there in the data -- The Semantic Web is just a way of encoding whatever it is that you know (it could have been derived, or not).
So you could use statistics, or mining, or the wisdom of crowds, to markup data -- but then where do you store and share what you have learned about that data? The Semantic Web proposes a richer framework for storing and publishing that metadata. It is completely independent of how the metadata is generated. It's just a better way to share that metadata.
Using string tags and microformats, or XML tags for that mater, are just different ways of marking up data. RDF and OWL are also just different ways of marking up data -- but they are BETTER ways of doing it. They have much more power, they are more open, they are more extensible, they support bottom-up collective intelligence better in fact.
This is why I propose that if we MUST use ridiculous terms like Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, then let's not tie them to a particular technology. Let's just tie them to decades, in which many technologies happen together.
Let's face it the world is not as cut-and-dried as people would like to make it seem. RDF started in Web 1.0 in fact!!!
I think that there is a distinct difference in the structure of the Web over time however. RDF enables us to move the Web from a file-server to something more like a database. It enables a web of data. It does for data what hypertext does for text -- I call that hyperdata. This is certainly something new and very useful, but it will depend on what people ultimately do with it.
At Radar we are taking a Web 2.0 approach to Web 3.0. Essentially we are making use of user-generated content and the wisdom of crowds, as well as statistical analysis, mining and machine learning. Combined we have something much more powerful than either on its own: a true platform for collective intelligence. The fact that we happen to store the data using the Semantic Web is a convenience -- it makes our data more extensible and reusable by others. But ultimately the data itself comes from users. "
有一些想法我同意。他说语义Web可能对于很多智能应用很有用是对的。但是证明布丁的方法只有吃一吃它，这是我妈妈过去说的。
