Web 4.0

Posted on September 22, 2008 
Filed Under Chief Blogging Officer

As I was considering the possibility of writing about politics, the events of the day, and the zeitgeist of our times on a company blog, the idea led me to envisioning a shift in the way that people find products and get their information, and the way that the two feed one another.

Traditionally, brands and broadcast networks partner to marry sports, entertainment, and news programming with advertising. This leads to advertisers having undue influence on the news, which shapes public opinion and the very paradigm within which we live. Television, print media, and radio are all influenced by advertisers, and corporate consolidation has narrowed the possibility of truly “fair and balanced” reporting even more.

People talk about Web 3.0 as being an expansion of the capabilities of search engines. Perhaps they will become more like a personal assistant, making suggestions based on your trends and preferences in things like movies, dining, other forms of entertainment and even purchases (kind of like Pandora). Mobile micro-blogging has been suggested to me as well, but that is already happening, though not totally ubiquitously and as a matter of course, so maybe we should call that Web 2.5ish.

Since blogging has become a way to keep abreast of the news without commercial influence (for the most part), it is a better way to get unfiltered information from a variety of sources, both biased and unbiased. I think that the more people depend on blogs to get their information, the better and more balanced the Blogosphere will become.

So, assuming that the modest changes suggested would be Web 3.0, I have two thoughts concerning what may come about as Web 4.0. The first would be a shift toward blogs being more trusted than traditional commercial media for unfiltered information among so many people that a tipping point is reached and a new paradigm emerges. This would force substance to supplant spin, science to supplant myth, and truth to supplant fiction. It would transform our political system, our economy, our educational system, and in fact, our reality as we know it.

Instead of companies buying ad space, their blogs would attract readership through the quality of the content, and that would be a way that people find the company, via the depth of their thinking, not through Madison Avenue bells and whistles. Partnerships would emerge, networks of like-minded businesses who respect one another’s views and the manner in which they are being presented. Your reputation as a company would have something to do with your sense of social responsibility and your commitment to the truth.

The second thought that I have is a transition away from television altogether and every living room having a computer with a large screen and interactive capabilities. You have as many choices as there are web locations, and you can multi-task in terms of the consumption of entertainment and information. So many more choices would arise via the implementation of this innovation (which is obviously quite doable in terms of technology) that the thin pickins’ that we see today on commercial television would lose their value. If you make an indie film, you have the same ability to compete for viewership as any high budget Hollywood production. If you have a nightly news webcast, you have the same distribution outlet as any major network. This would level the playing field and transform humanity, replacing today’s stream of plodding, linear garbage with a radial simultaneity of nearly infinite possibilities.

Those are some thoughts on the future of the Internet and the impact that it can have on society. Please leave a comment if you would like to share your own vision, and do remember to think big, because we have no limitations except those that we impose upon ourselves.


           

Comments

One Response to “Web 4.0”

  1. Nick Field on September 23rd, 2008 11:50 am

    I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t really think that it’s going to be the case. Micro-blogging is very much a 2.0 thing and we still have a long way to go before we see another transition into the next generation of web.

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