Reading: "Web Squared – Web 2.0 Five Years On"

Wow, what a great paper – thanks to @AnneBB finding this and sending out to her Twitter network.

It’ll take a while to fully digest the contents, but here are some choice excerpts for you, to whet your appetite;

“Ever since we first introduced the term ‘Web 2.0′, people have been asking, “What’s next?” Assuming that Web 2.0 was meant to be a kind of software version number (rather than a statement about the second coming of the Web after the dotcom bust), we’re constantly asked about “Web 3.0.” Is it the semantic web? The sentient web? Is it the social web? The mobile web? Is it some form of virtual reality? It is all of those, and more.”

“The Web is no longer a collection of static pages of HTML that describe something in the world. Increasingly, the Web is the world – everything and everyone in the world casts an  information shadow’, an aura of data which, when captured and processed intelligently, offers extraordinary opportunity and mind-bending implications. Web Squared is our way of exploring this phenomenon and giving it a name.”

The paper concludes with some very insightful comments, lile;

“The new direction for the Web, its collision course with the physical world, opens enormous new possibilities for business, and enormous new possibilities to make a difference on the world’s most pressing problems.”

“It’s time for the Web to engage the real world. Web meets World—that’s Web Squared.“