Future of the Web: 2010 and beyond

Before we continue, here's wishing all of you from around the world, a very happy new year, and the start of another decade.

The beginning of the first decade of this century saw the emergence of the Internet and the web as a force to reckon with. "Web 1.0", as it is now called, in hindsight, saw a number of ups and downs [who can forget the bubble], but nevertheless for those who had the courage (and luck, and of course the creativity) to weather that storm, caught the attention of the people of this world.

Without the belief that the web was a force to reckon with, we would not have seen the maturing of the "web as a platform". And, experts say, "Web 2.0" (See post: What is Web 2.0?) - the present generation of stuff that's enabled via the now, almost ubiquitous Internet, is only just beginning to exploit what's possible.

So, what does the future of the Web hold, as we embark on yet another exciting start to this decade, with renewed hopes of economic recovery, the increased penetration of the web in our daily lives, a larger digital people and the hype & promise of Cloud Computing (See post: What is Cloud Computing?)?

Nova Spivack, a technology visionary, has written about the past, present and future of the web. His famous graph (see below), depicting the evolution of the web seems to offer some hint to what the future of the web holds.


Nova blogs extensively - and very thoughtfully - and what's really unique about the web-evolution graph, is how he has divided the evolution, more on the basis of time (decade-wise), to depict the incrementally [smarter] web. This is quite in contrast to what many folks often times tend to interpret as the progressively "next, technology-driven version" of the web.

As we enter the third decade of the web (and hence 'Web 3.0'), Semantic Web seems to be the central theme and some of the early innovations are already beginning to see the light of day, even as the sun has set on 2009.