The buzz phrase Web 2.0 has become a tired axiom in the attempts of the geek community to redefine itself after the first internet bubble burst. The term bubble itself has become an over-tired expression of unbridled human greed and folly. Most everyone now agrees that Web 2.0 is not much more than a marketing slogan, albeit one which embraces the disruptive forces stemming from the collision of business, media and searching abilities on the web.

So what the fuck is Web 3.0?

Welcome to the next level.

David Bayer has posted a good aggregation of the myriad views of just what Web 3.0 is or could be on his Gimme The Scoop blog. The best part of his post was this nifty little video crafted by Mike Wesch, a Digital Ethnographer, which rapidly scans through the early stages of our ability to use the net to communicate and then posits what I believe to be an inevitable consequence of the path we are following:

We are the web.

We are the machine.

I like that.

It is reminiscent of Kevin Kelly’s talk at TED, where he asked the question: “What Does Technlogy Want?”:

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The future will be better tomorrow.
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Meanwhile, in the United States of America, the troglodytes of power are busy in their caves happily crafting a new set of stone tools.

Cheers.

P.S. I’m sticking this last video in here not because it’s relevant but just because it’s neat.

I had the pleasure of working alongside Michael Moschen in 1985 during the production of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth - he was the guy who so deftly handled the crystal balls for David Bowie.

Moschen gave a talk and performance at TED back in 2002 and they just posted it yesterday. He is more than a juggler - Moschen is a dancer who interacts with physical objects - and his art always leaves me gaping in wonderment.

Enjoy.