There are already some 50 edits on the one sentence managed so far....

I don't even think that article should have been made. It's pointless, and people should just calm down. Perhaps a brief mention in the Web 2.0 article that "wanabees have come up with some web 3 definitions, but they are all so lame".

Too much controversy, with absolutely no significance.

yeah.. everybody knows web 3.0 will just be the security update to web2.0, re-released with a new version number so that everybody has to upgrade.

web 4.0 is going to be the cool new technology.

Web 3.0 for me mens return to passive users. Now you can tag, personalize etc. Web 3.0 should do that instead of you. Why tagging? System should know enough things about it without your manual help. Why personalize (home pages)? They should be able find what you want. Browsing database of videos at YouTube? No, having a personalized stream of video related to your interests. That´s the future – I hope, I wish.

Could someone someone please explain "the semantic web" to me in simple English – I've read the W page but can't get my head around it.

Ok here goes, Jack:

Basically, it's about writing semantic code. Semantic code is code that has meaning. For example, separating an HTML form using the "fieldset" is semantic – it's just logical and more human. To machines, semantic code is much more readable, and can therefore gain more from the page – because they understand it more.

Semantics is the meaning of a language.

Thanks Mambo,

This paragraph from Wikipedia also helped;

"Humans are capable of using the Web to carry out tasks such as finding the Swedish word for "car," to reserve a library book, or to search for the cheapest DVD and buy it. However, a computer cannot accomplish the same tasks without human direction because web pages are designed to be read by people, not machines. The Semantic Web is a project aimed to make web pages understandable by computers, so that they can search websites and perform actions in a standardized way."

To me, Web 3.0 is when we finally redefine what constitutes a "web server" and find ways to use P2P technology to allow *average* people to host their *own* blogs, identity profiles, photos, videos, and other content, free of the advertising, censorship, and centralized fragility of corporate services like MySpace.

http://www.tallent.us/blog/CommentView.aspx?guid=06580a20-f818-486c-b531-c7bf2769844a

The semantic markup will come from content generation tools that need to interoperate between servers, not from the users, who could care less about clean semantics.