Since the 1940s, technology has stepped into a new era where advances in all aspects continue in leaps

and bounds. The invention of the computer has made all of these advances more easily obtained, and come much quicker than ever imagined. One of the most well-know breakthroughs is the internet, or World Wide Web. Although we have all heard of the internet, not everyone realizes that the internet itself is advancing and expanding at an exponential rate. From 1983 to the present there have been many definite stages of internet advances. Getting everyone to agree on what is incorporated in these stages is difficult, especially today with the current standards being shuffled yet again. To really understand what the internet is we must first understand its origins, and the origins of the computer itself. In the late 1930s and early 1940s many scientists and inventors began to experiment with rudimentary machines able to take in and process information to arrive at a form of output. German scientist Konrad Zuse created the first binary computer and introduced it in 1941. It was simply a program-controlled automatic calculator, but a computer none the less. From this, people started to realize the potential in computers. Interest grew quickly and a mere eight years later, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Maurice Wilkes created the first true computer that could run a program. This program could compute lists of squared numbers. Although these computers were marvels

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of their time they were not even close to having the power to run a browser or internet-based program of any kind. It was not until the late 1960s that any computers would be able to handle that. In 1969, work began on the original internet known as the ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) net. It was developed for the military so that they could safely transfer information between major military installations. This was done through a protocol called Network Control Protocol, or NCP. The first data transfer was between super computers at UCLA and Stanford Research Institute, and it actually crashed the computer at UCLA. Despite the early setback, ARPAnet is credited with such innovations as e-mail in 1971, and FTP, File Transfer Protocol, in 1973. As more and more computers were added to the network from many different manufacturers, serious compatibility issues arose. This led to a new set of protocols called TCP/IP in 1982. In 1986, the National Science Foundation created the NSF network, which began to replace the slower and outdated ARPAnet. It started with five supercomputer centers, and quickly grew to many more universities and major corporations. In the five years between 1986 and 1991 the amount of data transferred increased from tens of thousands to 1.3 trillion bytes per month. This was an integral part of what was to come next.

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In 1993, the internet was released to the public, marking the advent of the World Wide Web. Web 1.0 is a retronym to refer to the web styles used prior to Web 2.0 in 2004. Web 1.0 consisted of static, or read only pages, HMTL form via e-mail, and online guest books for tracking visitors to websites. Websites could also display Graphic Interchange Format or GIF pictures. Compared to what we are now used to, the first World Wide Web was very simple and slow. With average speeds of 50 kbps there was very limited levels of user interaction built into Web pages. As access speeds grew through direct internet access lines like DSL and broadband, the technology that could be utilized via the internet expanded. In 1999 when Darcy Dillucci coined the phrase Web 2.0 in her article Fragmented Future she said: The Web we know now, which loads into a browser window in essentially static screenfuls, is only an embryo of the Web to come. The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, as we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop. DiNucci, D. (1999) Fragmented Future, Print 53

As with Web 1.0, there is no real definition of what Web 2.0 actually consists of, but there are many features mutually agreed upon that are synonymous with the phrase Web 2.0. The first of these is the platform that is used to create it. That platform, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, or AJAX, is

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based on JavaScript, XML, HTML, and CSS. All of these are languages, or kinds of computer code, that define the appearance and functionality of Web pages from font sizes and color to hypertext links. They are all used to make internet applications more user-friendly, and visually appealing. Before Web 2.0 Web pages were basically read-only pages. Now with the emergence of this new platform, new sites such as social networking sites and wikis created a read-write environment. These make up the second component of Web 2.0. Social Networks are websites that users can join to share photos, videos, and links with other users. They can stay in contact with friends, and meet new friends through their social network pages. Wikis are content management systems that allow users to edit the content of a web page. This is done through an online interface that allows users to edit the information displayed in a Web page themselves. The third part of Web 2.0 is made up of blogging and podcasting. Blogging and podcasting sites allow you to share, host, and publish both audio, and video. Although they are both used to deliver some form of information to a user, they are very different. Blogging is similar to an online diary. It consists of one main page with script entries set in reverse chronological order. Podcasting is only a piece of a website. A podcast is an audio file, typically MP3 format that can be downloaded to a computer, portable media player, or both. This can be

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done either manually or by subscribing to an RSS (really simple syndication) feed. An RSS feed will automatically download new podcasts from your feed much like a DVR does with your favorite tv shows. Many companies also use the new guidelines of Web 2.0 for web office tools. Web office tools offer a second choice to the high cost of office programs from word processing to online calendars. With only a computer and a broadband connection, you can find programs that are similar and compatible to the Microsoft Office programs. These programs can save, import, and export files in many different formats from HMTL to .doc depending on what you need. Both Zoho (zoho.com) and Google docs (docs.google.com) have many of these features. The biggest negatives of this technology are access, privacy, and data security issues. They also have file and data storage limitations, but many of these issues are easily dealt with and corrected. The positives also help to balance out these negatives. You are able to post, collaborate on, and share multiple formats of documents from word documents to spreadsheets. All of these things are somewhat agreed upon as being a part of Web 2.0. Depending on whom you talk to regarding these definitions you may get a different answer. There is no real clear cut answer when it comes to which technologies fit into what stages of the internet. Many people will argue that many

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of these same programs and platforms are crossing into a whole new stage of the Web. You can argue that Web 3.0 does not exist right now, and you would not be wrong. Most of what is Web 3.0 is actually theory and ideas. It is just in the baby stages of creation. But at the same time, websites are trying to upgrade their current pages and are shading the area between Web 2.0 and 3.0. Web 3.0 or The Semantic Web, a phrase coined by Timothy BernersLee, will try to make the internet a more fluid and personal experience. The idea is to make the internet more understandable for your browser and computer. With the current internet, most data is placed to be understood by the user, but Web 3.0 will add more machine-readable metadata so that the computer itself can understand the Web content. Right now, if you were to search for a topic your search results would retrieve many useful results. Unfortunately, there would be many more results that have nothing to do with your subject. The browser simply looks for key words whether they have any bearing on your search or not. The new embedded metadata would be able to make it possible to not only sift through these results and remove the unassociated material, but it would also link material that is pertinent to your subject.

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Similarly, with other formats such as photos or music, you would be able to search for results not only from the titles, but through similar pictures or sound bytes. And not only would you get your results, you would in theory receive many other helpful links pertaining to that search. There would be no more following countless links from page to page; it would all come to you. This is a major part of the new Web 3.0, but there are many more ideas of what may be on the horizon. A completely different way of looking at the future of the Web is that of a 3-D version of the Web. In this version, the world would be set up in a Google maps-like setting where you could log on and do anything from shop at a local store to purchase a home on the other side of the world. This would work much like online gaming sites do today. A website would host a virtual reality version of the world that is completely interactive, and you would literally walk through this program to whatever it was that you needed. Anything from going to the library to buying a car would be possible online. Also, just as much a part of Web 3.0 as the new or smarter platform is continued integration with every day pieces of our lives. Many automobile companies and cellular phone companies are integrating computers, GPS, and other pieces of technology into their products right now. It will not stop there. The more integration we have, the more the internet can help us. There are

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companies currently working on projects from getting you the days top news stories and weather on your bathroom mirror to home integration systems that will open or close windows due to current weather conditions. We will soon see televisions or computers that turn on for you when the garage door opens, or smart appliances that know when to order groceries or do the dishes. All of this is quite possible with the new Web 3.0 in the next ten years. As Nova Spivack, founder and CEO of Radar Networks, wrote: The Semantic Web is a set of technologies which are designed to enable a particular vision for the future of the Web a future in which all knowledge exists on the Web in a format that software applications can understand and reason about. By making knowledge more accessible to software, software will essentially become able to understand knowledge, think about knowledge, and create new knowledge. In other words software will be able to be more intelligentnot as intelligent as humans perhaps, but more intelligent than say, your word processor is today. We have come a very long way over the last seventy years with computer technology, and with the internet growing at its current rate there is almost no end to what can be accomplished. People are already starting to think about what Web 4.0 may have in store. Just as sure as 3.0 is just over the horizon, 4.0 will be here before we know it.

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Bibliography Metz, Cade. Web 3.0 PC Magazine 26.7/8 (2007): 74-79. Academic Search Premeir. EBSCO. Web. 29 Sept 2010 Caverly D Nicholson S, Battle J, Atkins C. Techtalk: Web 2.0, Blogs, and Development Education. Journal of Developmental Education [serial online]. Fall 2008 2008;32(1):34-35. Available from: Academic Search Premeir, Ipswitch MA. Accessed October 8, 2010. Baumann, Michael. "Web 3.0: The Next Step for the Internet. (Cover story)." Information Today 26.5 (2009): 1-46. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 18 Nov. 2010. Getting, Brian Basic Definitions: Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0. Practical Ecommerce. April 18, 2007. Web 15 Nov 2010 Strickland, Jonathan. "How Web 3.0 Will Work" 03 March 2008. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web30.htm> 18 November 2010.

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Spivack, Nova Minding the PlanetThe meaning and future of the Semantic Web NovaSpivack.com 6, Nov 2006. Web. 15, Oct 2010. National Science Foundation. [The Internet changing the way we communicate] Americas Investment in the Future 2000 1-17 "Web 2.0." New World Encyclopedia. 2 Feb 2009, 23:25 UTC. 18 Nov 2010, 23:42 Web 2.0 Course Technologies, Cengage Learning 2010

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