Web 3.0 is for real. The fundamental shift is from information-centric to knowledge-centric patterns of computing. Gartner doesn't get this yet. But, that's OK. They will eventually.

So, what's different? Knowledge-centric computing means that knowledge is represented in both human and machine interpretable form. It is not locked up in documents, in black-box objects, in procedural code. It separate from these, and accessible to a variety reasoners. This changes user experience, social computing, application concepts of operation, and infrastructure in a hundred ways. We get more than webs of connected information, and webs of social participation. We get webs of meaning and connected knowledge. Not just passive knowledge, which gives us better searching and navigating, but also active knowledge for a range of self* capabilities -- adaptive, autonomic, autonomous. But, I'll let you in on a secret: the big shift from IT as it has been practiced until now is that with web 3.0 we enable architectures of learning.

Who gets this? Telecom people do. They've figured out that they can't deliver context-aware, personalizable services, anytime, anywhere without semantics. Grid computing people have figured out that they can't virtualize and manage services effectively with stack architectures. They need semantic models that cut across all the layers orthogonally. COTS people get this now too, there is no way to make SOA work without semantics. They are starting inside, with the middleware. And it's beginning to dawn on the hardware people that semantic models (e.g. semantic agents) might be just the approach they need to make multi-core, multi-thread, distributed processors programmable, especially as the number of processing units increases. For us, a really exciting area is the future of distributive collaborative environments -- collective knowledge systems, semantic usites, and semantic advertising.

If you want to know more about how web 3.0 will really impact the consumer internet, ICT products and services, and industry verticals, then go to www.project10x.com. There you can download a prospectus for our forthcoming study "Semantic Wave 2008: Industry Roadmap to Web 3.0." The prospectus contains an executive summary of the report thesis.