Web 3.0?

An article in the online publication, Government Technology, discussed WEB 3.0 and how it might relate to government: Web 3.0 Could Lead to E-Government That Anticipates Citizens’ Needs.

WEB 3.0 was described as machine-to-machine technology whereas WEB 2.0 is collaboration and the sharing of information by people.  This difference was illustrated by showing how music preferences might be shared.  With WEB 2.0 you might see your friends musical preferences on Facebook.  With WEB 3.0 an online service such as Pandora might find your friends preferences on Facebook and suggest them to you.

WEB 3.0 is also called the “Semantic Web” which was described here as the web technologies and methods that allow applications to understand scanned data. “Microformatting” is seen as a solution.

The discussion of how government might use 3.0 seemed to be centered on government providing data for use by third parties.  Government data that is  plentiful and machine-readable would be a requirement.  Some current 3.0 uses were described such as a service in Utah.  The Utah state portal can read a users IP address and provide information relevant to the user’s location.

This is not the first time I have a read about WEB 3.o and this article made it a bit more clear.