Week two’s lecture on web iterations showed me that the Internet and all of its uses have become absolutely ingrained in today’s modern society. Just looking at myself I can see this. My whole social life is organised through Facebook, I find out everything from train times to trivia through Google, and university would be absolutely impossible without the Internet (I actually watched this lecture online). So as it is, Web 1.0 and 2.0 have changed the way we access information and connect with one and other. Web 3.0 looks like it may end up doing all of this for us.
Some aspects of the Semantic Web really impressed me, geo-tagging in particular. I was at a festival a few weeks ago and lost four of my friends early on, the phone reception was horrible so I didn’t find them until later that night. Learning about Web 3.0 made me think of an app I heard about a while ago, seen in the YouTube clip below.
Something like this would have made our day a lot easier. Apple is really starting to break into the Semantic Web with apps such as these and Siri. I know I would have trouble getting by without my Iphone, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing.
The idea of Web 3.0 amazed me, but it also makes me a little nervous. I don’t think we should depend on technology any more than we do already, or have such an individual Internet. Sure it might make things easier for us, but at what cost? Web 1.0 and 2.0 work so well online because the companies and social groups who utilise them are there to display themselves to the masses.
Social networks are accessible profiles of your life (albeit only the parts you want to put out there), and neither 1.0 or 2.0 are built around privacy. Web 3.0 doesn’t become private just because it’s aimed at individuals. In fact the Internet now knows the semantics, the meaning behind everything you do. It tells your parents where you are 24 hours a day, knows what you type into Google at home, how much money you have in your bank account and which friends you talk to the most on Facebook. Everything we do online will have a meaning attached to it, and our Smartphones, or Laptops can remember that information and use it.
If advertisers can use this information to change the type of information we see online, who’s to say The Government, The Police or unknown individuals can’t as well? In the end I think it comes down to what we value more: confidentiality or convenience.
If advertisers can use this information to change the type of information we see online, who’s to say The Government, The Police or unknown individuals can’t as well? In the end I think it comes down to what we value more: confidentiality or convenience.
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