“What is going to be Web 3.0?” This is a question that I have been asked many times by a variety of people. My answer is generally a spiel about how I prefer to not label the generational Web in such a manner with tidbits on opening up protected information. As the methods of content creation changed around the millennium it was relatively easy to define the boundaries between a static Internet and one that allowed users to create a fully dynamic world. The splitting of content and style gave users the ability to publish anything at anytime using easily customizable, and rich-looking, visuals.

While getting intimate with my programming roots I came across, on Planet PHP, a great article by Ben Ramsey and his dividing of the Web into generations. Ben took an access-level approach in his definition resulting in Web 1.0 referring to read-only, 2.0 meaning read-write and 3.0 fulfilling the dream of read-write-execute. This is fine and dandy, but I would like to add some of my thoughts on the division.

Again, while I prefer not to toss around generational terms, the shift in technology allowed us to define the Web 1.0-to-2.0 shift with relative ease – something I do not see happening as we move forward. The proliferation of the Web and the technologies powering it have changed so much from early 2000′s that there have been many inter-generational jumps and, in my opinion, the executable Web has already been around for some time. One of the comments on the article is written by Bradley Holt who points out one such example of SaaS (software as a service) when he writes,

“You touch on one (of many) interesting points here: the emergence of the web as a platform. The most obvious example of this is Twitter where many of its users don’t directly use the twitter.com website but rather use it indirectly through its REST API.”

Now, Twitter is a relatively recent phenomenon, but Web API’s are nothing new. Websites like Amazon, YouTube, Facebook and many others have had open API’s that give 3rd party developers access to their data in a common format. The new Facebook design (which I love, by the way), looks so much like an operating system – right down to thetaskbar and application menu. For years now, my own word processing, spreadsheet creation and notetaking has all been moved to the Google Documents platform, something that is definitely considered executable.

Ben Ramsey’s article provides a glimpse into the generational Web and, while I may disagree on the transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, Ben writes “I suspect that, by 2015, we’ll have a clear idea of how this shift will play out”, something I believe is true. The line has been blurred and technology moves so quickly that it is becoming increasingly difficult to label the present and the future Web. Only in the future can we define what has happened in the past.