OK, so last week, I quoted Dries Buytaert (the guy behind Drupal) as saying that the next-generation Web will be all about data portability.
Nuh, uh, retorts Fred Avolio. Avolio, who wishes people would stop using the phrase "Web 3.0," says the next-gen Web will really be all about people - how to learn whether you can trust what they write, by linking people's ideas across the entire Web. Right now, he says, you can't really trust, oh, reader comments on Amazon.com because they exist only within the context of Amazon - there's no easy way to see what they've written elsewhere, to put their ideas in a bigger context that can let you decide whether to trust what they write:
What if, from a comment published by a user on Amazon.com, I could end up knowing the URL of its blog, if I could see the ratings he got from Ebay.com users, if I could read other comments he wrote on other web sites and blogs? What if I could know more about a person from any location on the Web, by referring to a comment he wrote?
Then I could start building a better trust relationship with that person, and put more weight in what he said.
Hmm, both Buytaert and Avolio could actually be talking about the same thing - just at different levels in the stack (Buytaert at, oh, Layer 3; Avolio at Layer 7): How to connect things and place them in context. Ooh, Semantic Web!
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Giasson, not Avolio
Hi Mr. Gaffin,
First, my family name is Giasson and not Avolio :)
Otherwise thanks for mentioning this writing. Not that the semweb is really about people (in fact it is not at all, the basic goal is to help systems exchanging data). However, as side effect, this help us, humans (at the end, it is sure that everything is related to humans, to people, since we always create things to enhance the World we live in), to access the information that is presented to us. So this assessment lead us to trusting, or not, a user on the web. This assessment analysis is helped by the inter-linked data that is supported by the semantic web.
Thanks!
take care,
Fred