How the WebOS Evolves?

Here is my timeline of the past, present and future of the Web. Feel free to put this meme on your own site, but please link back to the master image at this site (the URL that the thumbnail below points to) because I'll be updating the image from time to time.

This slide illustrates my current thinking here at Radar Networks about where the Web (and we) are heading. It shows a timeline of technology leading from the prehistoric desktop era to the possible future of the WebOS...

Note that as well as mapping a possible future of the Web, here I am also proposing that the Web x.0 terminology be used to index the decades of the Web since 1990. Thus we are now in the tail end of Web 2.0 and are starting to lay the groundwork for Web 3.0, which fully arrives in 2010.

This makes sense to me. Web 2.0 was really about upgrading the "front-end" and user-experience of the Web. Much of the innovation taking place today is about starting to upgrade the "backend" of the Web and I think that will be the focus of Web 3.0 (the front-end will probably not be that different from Web 2.0, but the underlying technologies will advance significantly enabling new capabilities and features).

See also: This article I wrote redefining what the term "Web 3.0" means.

See also: A Visual Graph of the Future of Productivity

Please note: This is a work in progress and is not perfect yet. I've been tweaking the positions to get the technologies and dates right. Part of the challenge is fitting the text into the available spaces. If anyone out there has suggestions regarding where I've placed things on the timeline, or if I've left anything out that should be there, please let me know in the comments on this post and I'll try to readjust and update the image from time to time. If you would like to produce a better version of this image, please do so and send it to me for inclusion here, with the same Creative Commons license, ideally.

Comments

[prefabrik evler]

Thank you for very helpful blog. Those screencasts were very informative.
prefabrik ofis

[Dave Cockbain]

I really don't want to get into the product-related end of this discussion but I have to question your positioning of Windows and MacOS. I was there and I can say, categorically, that the Mac had a WIMP os long before the first versions of Windows - which were buggy then too.

The point about this, really is to do with innovative style. Whatever you say about the Mac, I've always associated it with intuition. If you're talking about Web 3.0 I think you're also talking about the same thing... intuition.

Companies like Apple (and Netscape) appear to have taken an intuitive and collaborative approach to the world whilst companies like Microsoft concentrated on market share.

Again, this is not a partisan comment. We're approaching the point, I suspect, where the facts of this will be clear to all.

[Firmalar]

I am not sure exactly where but some of these technologies may have to figure in the path somewhere:

- read/write web
- Semantic Annotations (with protocols like Annotea)

[kız oyunları]

i get to interact with the web the same way i do with my os? i wish i had that functionality-- everything is just kind of there and its easy to use.

[sohbet]

thanks..

[oyunlar99]

when do i get to interact with the web the same way i do with my os? i wish i had that functionality-- everything is just kind of there and its easy to use.

[aşk şiirleri]

when do i get to interact with the web the same way i do with my os? i wish i had that functionality-- everything is just kind of there and its easy to use.

[amerikan kapı]

Also... what about mobile (both voice, data, texting) and gaming (MMOs/VWs)? Don't know if those aspects are appropriate on your graph, but it might be interesting to see them on the continuum.

Again... nice work. Intriguing to see it on one line.

[mirc]

when do i get to interact with the web the same way i do with my os? i wish i had that functionality very good

[Shiv Singh]

I liked your timeline a lot. I suspect we'll see some of those items on the far right sooner than you may think though. Cheers

http://www.goingsocialnow.com

[mircturk]

Thanks
Best regards
mirc

[berkecan]

Anyway, love to have a coffee about this one day and debate it...great
exploration of a topic ad agencies should be having more of...sometimes posing
the question is more important than having the right answer. Cheers
sohbet
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[karman]

very nice site thank you.i readed all words.
sohbet odasi nefret sozleri

 ozel sohbet siir odasi tam dost

[karman]

very nice site thank you.i readed all words.
sohbet odasi nefret sozleri

 ozel sohbet siir odasi tam dost

[johns]

very nice site thank you. i back come here
ozel sohbet odalari

[sohbet]

nice site thanks all sohbet

[john]

http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2006/08/5_rules_of_soci.html

[Mike Linksvayer]

If you would like to produce a better version of this image, please do so and send it to me for inclusion here, with the same Creative Commons license, ideally.

Which CC license is the graph under? You might want to specify in the footer and/or grab a new license-specific license button and use it instead of the generic "some rights reserved" button.

[Dorai]

I am not sure exactly where but some of these technologies may have to figure in the path somewhere:

- read/write web
- Semantic Annotations (with protocols like Annotea)
- Semantic Component Frameworks (like gadgets except that the meta data may be in RDF)

[jeremy]

when do i get to interact with the web the same way i do with my os? i wish i had that functionality-- everything is just kind of there and its easy to use.

[Andy Havens]

Nice chart. Very interesting.

Don't know if you're marking the beginnings of technology or the popularity, but wikis got started in the 1990s. Also, Napster started in 1999, so, maybe "Social Media Sharing" should come down a wee bit.

One missing chunk, though, seems to be the online, pre-web social mechanisms like BBSs, forums, etc. If you're going to list wikis and blogs (which are social apects of HTML, essentially), shouldn't you be listing BBSs and other early USENET/IRC implemented social systems?

Also... what about mobile (both voice, data, texting) and gaming (MMOs/VWs)? Don't know if those aspects are appropriate on your graph, but it might be interesting to see them on the continuum.

Again... nice work. Intriguing to see it on one line.

[Michael Belanger]

Hi Nova - The WebOS is 95% about rich media content. Even Powerset (a late comer and far behind others in the NLP search tech space) is unable to embrasce "native" rich media understanding. NLP has always thrown away context to fit SQL database calls. A fundamentally new database architecture is required (Patents filed as early as 1994) to use every scrap of context expressed by well articulated needs (query). You can experience an award winning NLP enterprise search offering (activated in 2005) at Boston's Children's Hospital's Center for Media and Child Health - www.cmch.tv - go to their "research" page and experience "Smart Search." This NLP engine encourages (for highest precision) an everyday conversational query of unlimited length and complexity including "user jargon" of ten social science professional domains."
The next and final (post Google/Powerset) achievement in breakthrough WebOS user experience will be Jarg Corporation’s Semantic Knowledge Indexing Platform (SKIP) launch mastering "NOP" Natural Object Parsing that co-populates "well-understood native object content fragments" in the same master index with NLP-graph fragments. This final step - using conversational style requests (over a cell phone or keyboard) will provide total information awareness associated with the "roll" of the user - as derived on the fly from the full context of the request's information needs. Only relevant knowledge will be considered and the more contexts in the request - the more highly personalized will be the returns-ranking. These returns will be a “collage,” ranked by fit-to-context, of image segments, fragrances, text, structure segments, music segments and all forms of knowledge with precise contextual relation to your on the fly the needs – fit to your “user’s roll” of the moment. Jarg will be seeking its very fist institutional capital starting in March 2007. Jarg has incorporated Semantx Life Science, Inc. Care Commons, Inc and Preemptive Alert Corporation to become best of breed in their verticals.