I’m not sure if we can trust on a new label that is rising on the horizon. The never ending story about technology updates, versions and releases, and Moore’s law is going to turn out a new step, and our innovative genes drive us to talk about it in advance… This could be not really true, if you think to Web 3.0™ , due to the fact that people on the web already started to talk about it more than one year ago. But we are so innovative that we can surprise you.
The blurry image of the Web 3.0™ is made of a high level of cooperation and cooperative applications that, passing through videos, images and sensations, make them able to communicate and, this is the revolution, able to understand each other. It is the so called semantic web, were sites and application could share ideas and be related in terms of common ways of thinking about war, politics, science and so on. And, in any case, someone decided to trade mark the label, for any future use…

We need to jump forward to find the definition of (or the content to apply to) the newest 4.0 revolution, but…oh dear, Seth Godin already talk about this on January, and was really a good review… May I copy some parts of it and put my comments in bold?
Thanks Seth.

“The opportunities of the semantic web are limitless, and I can’t wait. But that’s not Web4 (I adore this, not 4.0 but only 4!!!). Web4 is what I’m really waiting for. And it’s entirely possible that Web4 will get here before the semantic web even though Web 3 makes it work a lot better.
We start with this:
• Ubiquity
• Identity
• Connection
We need ubiquity to build Web4, because it is about activity, not just data, and most human activity takes place offline.
We need identity to build Web4, because the deliverable is based on who you are and what you do and what you need.
And we need connection to build Web4, because you’re nothing without the rest of us.
Web4 is about making connections, about serendipity and about the network taking initiative.”

His post goes on with some scary examples of pervasive functionalities that control your life and behavior, showing people and “friends” where you are, if you’re late or hide under a tree for resting, using your calendar and contacts and relationship in order to easy your life and reduce the number of awkward episodes that could happen during a working day. And he closes with this terrific sentence:
“This stuff creeps some people out. The thing is, privacy is an illusion. You think you have privacy, but the video surveillance firms and your credit card company disagree. If we’re already on camera, we might as well get some benefits from it. If we choose.”

It seems that, running towards the finishing line for putting the flag on a new land for first, we model the future on our today limited vision. Web 2.0 ™ is an experience, made of people for people, that someone decided to trademark and put under control and give it a name. But we can’t encode a trend and close it into a definition long before the birth.

Why do I blog this?
Innovation is made of words that describe future technologies and trends or is made of future technologies that describe trends with innovative words? Waiting for Web 5.0, or Web5…