Web 3.0 -- and the experts say

So I’ve been reading and listening about the future of the Web -- 3.Ohhhhh.

To hear some talk about the face of the things to come you should fully expect the following to happen the next time you order a book from Amazon -- along with the “buyers also purchased” section you should fully expect to get a suggestion to follow me on Twitter , your Facebook account will send a friend request to my neighbor, you will get an email quote from a car insurance company that compares your current rate with company-X to a new offer from company-Y, and the pizza delivery guy will be at the door before you even think about placing the order.

After all the digital record shows you order Italian sausage and mushroom deep dish every Thursday.

And oh yeah, all the offers or actions taken on your behalf will be exactly what you wanted.

I don’t want to say any of these experts are wrong, but I’m just not that optimistic about the whole thing.

For one thing I have been trying to catalogue my likes, dislikes, dreams and needs for more than 40 years and still forget to pack my toothbrush when I travel, and I do that nearly two weeks a month.

I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, and I am pretty sure no amount of computing will give me the car insurance rate so good I just can’t wait to make the switch. Unless of course you are offering a free car, free full coverage, a lifetime of fuel, and a daily maintenance guy. Email me today if that offer is out there.

Not to mention I have been trying to figure out my wife since I met her and have met with little success, and I have far more info about her than you can find on the Web. Even if you just narrowed it down to gift finding based on her purchase activity, the results would not come back too impressive. She would end up getting the latest superhero t-shirt in size 8, or some type of children’s toy. Do you have any idea how many birthday parties a 1st grader has to go to each year?
If there is a group of programmers that can actually meet the expectations that some have of Web 3.0, forget Web 3.0. Just cold call married couples and offer to explain each spouse to the other for 100 bucks a head. You will be rich beyond your wildest dreams in a month and don’t have to worry about all those fancy updates to get us to Web 3.5.

It’s not just a lack of optimism. I’m wondering if we really need it. The experts tell us we will be able to find what we are looking for faster and with fewer irrelevant results.

What that really means is we will have more to sift through. When we get a bunch of bad search results via Google, we can easily eliminate 10 of 20 sites to review.
Not with Web 3.0. Everything will be relevant. That means more to look at. I’m not really sure I want more information than what I get. It’s already information overload on most days, so why do I want more.

Plus it means the boss will be able to find more relevant info. And what about that competitive edge? Right now the guy who knows how optimize the search has a leg up on the rest of the office.

I’m all for some change, and think communication needs to move forward, but can we slow down just a little bit. Maybe we should follow the OS model. How about we go to Web 2.2, through 2.9.1 and take a little extra time getting to Web 3.0? The average user is accustomed to figuring out the new gig and having to learn something else, and having the opportunity to complain about it. Hey that’s the way it’s always been done and it’s worked fine so far.