Web 4.0,Trip Down the Rabbit Hole or Brave New World?

If Web 2.0 is about web applications and social networking, and Web 3.0 is said to incorporate the semantics of data interpreted by machines, what the heck is Web 4.0 going to look like? If we are in the midst of an evolution, what have the big thinkers been able to conjure up about our futures online? Let’s take a look at some of the insights and theories put forth by the futurists, as us mere mortals breathlessly await the next big shiny thing to capture our hearts, minds and soul.

“What the BLEEP Do We Know,” a movie first released in 2004 went on to become one of the most successful documentaries of all time. Now distributed in over 30 countries, it has stunned audiences with its revolutionary mind-jarring blend of quantum physics and evolutionary thought. While widely popular and panned at the same time, this film is not a journey for closed minded, limited thinkers, or faint-of-mind folks. This is a mystical journey that leaves you curiously rooted in an upside-down-world of invisible unknowns that challenge every belief you’ve ever held sacred. I post it here, because in searching for answers to web 4.0 in our future, sometimes you need to take a trip down the rabbit hole, before you settle down to some more concrete realities.

In 2006, Jeff Moriarty, a Community Manager for Intel was bold enough to suggest that Web 4.0 was an “impending state at which all information converges into a great ball of benevolent self-aware light, and solves every problem from world peace to why Lost stunk last season.” However Jeff also had a small part on the “X-Files” so you might not be so inclined to agree with his epiphany.

On the Brave New World front, Nova Spivack is a technology visionary and entrepreneur with nearly two decades of experience in pioneering ventures. In 1994, he co-founded EarthWeb , one of the first Internet companies, where he helped key cultural institutions and businesses develop their first large-scale Web presences, including the New York Stock Exchange, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, BMG Music Club, Sony, AT&T and US West.

As a futurist and publisher of Twine, Spivack has been contemplating the past, present and future of the Web for quite some time. His timeline of technology from our prehistoric desktop era to our synchronistic future is depicted here.

As you can see, according to Spivak’s predictions we are currently at the tail end of Web 2.0, just starting to lay the groundwork for Web 3.0 or semantic technology which arrives in 2010 (start your stop watches). Web 4.0 or WebOS will be like middleware, where the Web will start functioning like an operating system,or what he calls, “the Intelligent Web.” Nova says he isn’t sure about exact dates or technologies on the top end of the map, but in his view each phase runs in approximate ten-year blocks.

E-Learning Queen is a company that focuses on real-world e-learning issues and emerging technologies. Susan Smith Nash, the founder who goes by the title “Queen’s Assistant” believes that Web 4.0 will include a array of sensors that will gather information from one’s environment to create a deep profile of our behaviors and activities.

Raymond Kurzweil is an inventor and futurist. He has been a pioneer in the fields of optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. predicts that by 2029, the WebOS will be parallel to the human brain. By that time, according to Kurzweil, “intelligent machines will combine the subtle and supple skills that humans now excel in (essentially our powers of pattern recognition) with ways in which machines are already superior, such as remembering trillions of facts accurately, searching quickly through vast databases, and downloading skills and knowledge.”

So are we approaching a moment in time when the Internet will actually transform into a “Learning Web,” where the Web is actually learning by itself, unprompted by humans? Seth Godin, popular speaker at Google and TED conferences and the man who popularized the topic of permission marketing believes Web 4.0 or Web4 (as he calls it) is all about “serendipity and the network taking initiative.”

Some of the future examples he conjures up sheds light on the potential innovation Web4 will be able to add to our lives…

• As a project manager, my computer knows my flow chart and dependencies for what we’re working on. And so      does the computer of every person on the project, inside my team and out. As soon as something goes wrong (or right) the entire chart updates.

• I’m late for a dinner. My GPS phone knows this (because it has my calendar, my location, and the traffic status). So, it tells me, and then it alerts the people who are waiting for me.

• I visit a blog for the first time. My browser knows what sort of stories I am interested in and shows me highlights of the new blog based on that history.

• I can invest in stocks as part of a team, a team that gains strength as it grows in size.

• My PDA knows I’m going to a convention. Based on my email logs, it recommends who I ought to see while I’m there–because my friends have opted in to our network and we’re in sync.

As Godin sees it, Web4 is “coming from the edges (we see all sorts of tribal activities popping up in blogs, communities, rankings) as opposed to from the center. Web 2.0 happened in largely the same way…and it’s
entirely possible that Web4 will get here before the semantic web even though Web 3 makes it work a lot better.”

Well, there you have it, sports fans… some of the greatest thinkers of our day all looking into their crystal balls for answers to our digital futures. However, before leaving you, one additional theory did surface that I thought worthy of note. “Gnardonkeys” who describe themselves as “two funny guys from San Diego who naively think Twitter can make them famous” offer some gnarly insights into Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 and why we can’t afford to let Web 4.0 happen…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pe79kPh3hw [/youtube]

So which ever fork in the road you decide to take…happy travels down the Rabbit Hole or the Brave New World!

Chrome, Google’s Web Browser, Out of Beta

Yesterday Google released the latest version of their free web browser that Google has coined Chrome. With this fifteenth release comes the dropping of the beta tag, now that google is satisfied that the program has met their stability standards.

Chrome has a few important features. For one, it comes with built-in security features. Thanks to its sandbox security process, which runs Chrome in a so called “sandbox” where malicious executables and other exploits cannot effect the rest of your computer, worries about phishing and exploits are minimized.

Chrome also comes with safe browsing features, which warn you if a page is suspected of being malicious, protecting you further from dangerous sites.

Chrome also provides a unique tab-management system. One clever idea Google implemented is that upon opening a new tab, Chrome gives you an organized list of thumbnails of your most visited pages, as well as your most used search engines. This feature makes creative use of the glaring whitespace left in most browsers when you open a new tab only to see a blank screen.

Chrome’s tabs can also be manipulated and shuffled around to make organizing your tabs more intuitive. For example, tabs in Chrome can be pulled out into new windows, and then popped back in to a window. I have found this feature useful, as I tend to have a lot of tabs open that are hard to keep track of; by popping the most important tab out into a window I can keep track of it easier, and when another tab becomes my focus I can switch them easily.

Chrome also makes interesting use of the address bar. The address bar is in fact an amalgamation of three features: a traditional address bar, a search engine and your browser history. Chrome intelligently chooses which one you want to use, streamlining searching and browsing nicely. This cuts down on the amount of buttons in the interface and makes your history more accessible and well-integrated.

With the new version comes improved video and audio plug-in support, which fixes glitches formerly experienced with media. Also, a bookmark import and export feature has been added, making the switch from your old browser painless. This compliments the new bulk bookmark management system, which allows you to organize and deal with all your bookmarks easily, and the quick bookmark button, which takes the form of a star at the top of the browser window.

Google also added some new privacy features to Chrome, including an incognito mode that allows you to open a page without making an entry into your history. This ensures that your mom will never find out about saucyclownworld.net. (I haven’t checked if that is a real website, and I recommend you don’t either.)

Overall, Chrome looks to make web browsing simpler, more intuitive and faster. Google’s focus seems to be straightforward usability, and all of Chrome’s features seem to have ease-of-use in mind. Chrome is also apparently very fast, and the latest version benchmarked at 50% faster than previous version

Unfortunately a few key features are missing. Form auto-fill and RSS support are absent, and without such features Chrome cannot be said to be a complete browser yet. Nonetheless, if you’re looknig for a fast, aesthetically pleasing, no-nonsense, user-friendly browser, check out the new version of Chrome, right here.

Intel Researching Virtually Self-Powered Mobile Devices

File this under very cool. Intel is apparently researching technology that would allow microchips and other devices to absorb energy from the environment, meaning they won’t require a battery, won’t need to be plugged in, and won’t require recharging.

Sources that are being considered for powering the devices include body heat from the user, solar power, kinetic energy from movement of the user, and even background radiation from TVs and other electronic devices. Presumably a combination of these may also be used.

The process, coined by some as “free energy,” may one day be used in devices like cellular phones, allowing them to harvest energy continuously, meaning they could in theory run for an indefinite amount of time.

The Chief Technology officer of Intel, Justin Rattner, had this to say about the technology:

It wouldn’t have any batteries, you wouldn’t have to come out and service them, and you don’t have to run any power. They are completely self-contained, and most importantly, self-powered as a result of scavenging energy from the environment.

So far the technology has only been considered for small devices like sensors, and will require some development before it can be implemented in larger devices like cel phones. But hopefully the day will come soon when my phone won’t require charging and I won’t have to worry about missing important calls letting me know that I’ve won a boat cruise or a timeshare in Florida.

Fallout 3 Review

The original Fallout, released in the fall of 1997, quickly became a computer RPG classic. Set in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic California, the player assumed the role of the Vault Dweller; one of a handful of people lucky enough to grow up in a nuclear shelter, known as a vault, after nuclear war left the outside world an irradiated wasteland.

Ostensibly the goal of the game was to venture out of your vault into the wastes to find a water chip; the only piece of technology capable of repairing your vault’s water purification system. In reality this quest was only a fraction of what made Fallout the game it was. The meat of the game-play was comprised of a plethora of open-ended quests, constant choices between good and evil deeds, which would accumulate positive or negative karma for your character, and a character creation and development system guided by a wide variety of skills, abilities and perks.

The combination of these elements meant Fallout was a highly personal experience. Would you make a character who would take advantage of others, killing and stealing for his or her own gain, or would your character be paragon of justice and generosity? Would you make a stealthy melee weapon specialist, a charismatic con-man, a heavy weapon-toting brute, or a master of medicine or science? Whatever choices you made shaped your experience significantly.

More than a decade later the third game in the Fallout series has finally been released to an eager fan-base. The original developers, Black Isle, sold the rights of the game to Bethesda, the developers of the Elder Scrolls series of computer RPGs, who have delivered fantastically. The core mechanics of the game remain the same: you make a character, set his or her natural abilities, such as strength, agility and intelligence, choose what skills suit you best and travel from the Vault into the wasteland, this time in search of your father.

Obviously the game has been updated with the latest technology: what used to be a 2D, isometric view is now a 3D, first-person view, and what used to be a world with a few cities and points of interest for you to travel between is now a massive, sprawling, detailed, post-apocalyptic interpretation of the Washington DC area. As the player you are free to wander through a fully-realized world of painstakingly rendered environments, loads of encounters and adventures, and a seemingly never-ending supply of super-mutants, raiders, and other irradiated baddies to fight.

But what really made the original Fallout unique was the atmosphere it established. It presented a dark, humorous, original, and fiercely creative world, combining 50s-style aesthetics and music with a bleak and depraved post-apocalyptic setting to give a compelling sense of absurdity, sadness and dark humour. This is where Fallout 3 truly succeeds. Wandering through a burnt-out ghost town and encountering a robot that blares pre-recorded messages of hope from the president of America hammers home a sense of irony that does justice to the original game.

Listening to a radio station play songs from 50s crooners while you have a vicious gun-battle with violent wasteland inhabitants gives the feeling that the whole world is straddling a thin line between cheeriness and insanity. Experiences like seeing lonely, faded billboards exuberantly advertising cereal and cartoons in the middle of the barren wasteland is the sort of thing that gives the world of Fallout 3 the depth and richness that fans of the series expected. Overall, Fallout 3 is a game that delivers whether you’re a fan of the series or not. But if you are, you won’t be disappointed.