
Forget trying to pin down what Web 2.0 is...er, was. Just give a flip of the hand in a dismissive way and say it was about social networks and web services. There, done with. Like the old phrase used to define the threshold of obscenity, you can say, “I know it when I see it”.
My favorite "go to" explanation is still this great video by Mike Wesch, Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us. You might still be one of the people who has watched from the over 6 million views of it so far. Also, catch his anthropological discussion of YouTube off of his main page there.
More importantly, we now must discuss what Web 3.0 is. How can we talk about 3.0 when we haven’t nailed down 2.0 as either marketing or venture fundraising lingo fastened to some general concepts? (insert dismissive hand gesture here).
OK, back to 3.0.
In a Trendwatch post today titled Mozilla Labs and Aurora: Envisioning a Web 3.0 browser it states off the top:
Mozilla, developer of the Firefox web browser, is asking people from around the world to participate in the creation of what could become a next-generation browser. The first ideas posted on the website include AdaptivePath’s Aurora idea, which is - to our knowledge - the first concept to describe Web 3.0 capability in a web browser.
Sweet. The first descriptions of 3.0 capabilities, though it turns out that they are looking at the Semantic Web as being the next versioning of online interaction. Tim Berners-Lee has been stating the Semantic Web as the next major iteration of the web experience for some time now.
If you would like an animated presentation of what that experience might be like, here is
Aurora’s take.