Web 3.0 < Intelligence Amplification ~= Digital Cortex

I share Brad’s disdain for the “Web 3.0” label. And I think that what he is calling “Intelligence Amplification” is what I’ve been calling the “Digital Cortex” — to extend the capabilities of our brain, trying to be more intelligent, trying to better process the information which streams into us from our new digital environment. (Oh, and trying to figure out why girls are so obnoxious.)

His post brings to mind 2 items from yesteryear:

First, Richard Cowin saying last year “‘Web 2.0’ is so Web 1.0“. One of the big points of Web 2.0 was that version numbers are so 90’s. Tell me, what version of Google do you use?

However, Richard goes on to say “I predict that we will not have a web 3.0. (Unless, of course their is money to be made).” Looks like the “unless” was the important part of that prediction!

Secondly, the idea of “Web 3.0” being another attempt at the semantic web recalls Cori Doctorow’s excellent essay from 2001 Metacrap : Seven reasons why metadata will always suck.

“A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be a utopia. It’s also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities.”

The solution is to be like the brain, which specializes in sifting through the messy data that we get from the outside world.

4 thoughts on “Web 3.0 < Intelligence Amplification ~= Digital Cortex”

  1. For one thing, in case the AI as mentioned in that article about web3.0 were to become real, we would have much more important things to worry about, like keeping our jobs. Turing-complete intelligence is a very difficult problem, and we are as clueless about it now as we were fifty years ago (in my and many other specialists’ opinion). The only arbiters of meaning relevant to human beings are, still, and for a very long while to come, only human beings themselves. We had some talks with Stan when he was in Osnabrueck on this, and I think it is one of the main reasons Lijit is a good idea.

  2. I agree that Google is getting crowded. (I even did a post about it)

    What we’re working on now is to take Lijit up a notch, where instead of just commenting on search results, we will actually be able to influence them. Then things won’t have to be so messy.

  3. Great post, loved the comic strip! This is an interesting theme — it’s also great to see the growing and nearly universal hatred for the “Web 3.0” term among technology bloggers. 🙂

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