Could the entire web one day be less like a catalogue and more like an incredibly knowledgable, helpful person? This is the possibility that is driving proponents of a new movement, Web 3.0, which I read about in a New York Times article this morning. Apparently, our current web is version 2.0, and is characterized by its ability to seamlessly link many different documents, pages, and forms of media. Web 3.0 refers to adding a new layer to the web-- that of semantic meaning, or 'intelligence.'

The author of the article explains, "Their projects often center on simple, practical uses, from producing vacation recommendations to predicting the next hit song. But in the future, more powerful systems could act as personal advisers in areas as diverse as financial planning, with an intelligent system mapping out a retirement plan for a couple, for instance, or educational consulting, with the Web helping a high school student identify the right college."

Something that has been on my mind for a little while now and has consequently passed its class discussion expiration date. . . McLuhan makes a big deal out of the idea that media provide us with extensions of ourselves, but what if the medium is unreliable? I'm concerned only about the mechanics of the medium, not about the misrepresentation of any "real" world. I mean what happens when you reach for something and it's just not there? Objects in the physical world rarely surprise us with their sudden absence; very few things seem to be there but aren't. We don't tolerate books with missing pages, or television signals that spontaneously drop segments from shows. But the internet, which we imagine will one day encompass all content everywhere, is full of dead links, of pages that don't turn. How many times has class in ITS been momentarily derailed by a misdirected browser? And thanks to our sexy embedded hyperlinks, even search engines can't help locate the truant content of the blogosphere.