Pondering Over The Future Of The World Wide Web

But there are many other challenges that have appeared since 1989. Video and audio are now more prevalent than ever, the number of people actually using the WWW at any moment is growing exponentially driven by lower access costs and cheaper technology. Furthermore, privacy issues like behavioural advertising solution (Phorm for example) were never part of the equation two decades ago.

Paradoxically, access to information is still an issue. Information might be available but cannot be found easily because it is written in a language that the receiver can't understand or the search engines can't find it if that information is locked in the dark web. This hidden web could be 30 times bigger than the surface or visible web, by some estimates.

Some of these issues could be solved by the adoption of the Semantic Web. It has already said that privacy principles will be enshrined into the Semantic Web by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), laying emphasis on who can access what.

This evolution of the World Wide Web will allow data to be understood by the computational resources behind the WWW. As Tim Berners Lee once said, "I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize."

Related Links

Web founder looks to big changes

(BBC)

Deep Web

(Wikipedia)

Berners-Lee returns to CERN to reminisce on the Web's past and focus on its future

(SCIAM)

Semantic web 'will boost privacy'

(Bluhalo)

Berners-Lee: Semantic Web will have privacy built-in

(ZDnet)

World Wide Web turns 20 - Tim Berners-Lee shares thoughts

(Blorge)