The future of the World Wide Web

Jim HendlerProfessor of Computer and Cognitive Science

Assistant Dean of Information Technology and Web Science

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)

http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hendler@jahendler (twitter)

The innovators

The inventors

They have made the Web what it is today

And on and on and on…

In the News Today!

Reports FB could go IPO as early as Wednesday!

(valuation: 5 lakh crore)₹

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I

In fact, we have made it to“Web 2.0”

• It is estimated that ~31% of the world’s population uses the World Wide Web – With most of China and India still to come (>2B non-users)– And this number is growing as cell phones and mobile Web

technologies become increasingly usable as primary browser platforms

• With social networking sites, esp. Facebook and the Chinese sites, becoming the primary Web destinations– Sharing taking over from searching

• just ask Vic Gundotra (IIT Madras), Google’s VP of Social

But we’re moving on…

What will Web 3.0 be?

• Big data, Linked-data, Cloud- and mobile- computing are changing the world

• We Don’t know how these trends will play out– Web: Google, Amazon, Travelocity…– Web 2.0: Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter…– Web 3.0: ??

• Let me make a few predictions

An exciting time of change

• Web 2.0 is becoming Web 3.0– But nobody is sure what that will be

• My conjecture Web 1.0 + Web 2.0 = Web 3.0– Social Web will become the basis of the New Web

• Changing Search• Changing E-commerce• Changing E-Science, E-government, E-everything else

• Social Media => Social Machines!

Trend 1: Social Media => Social Machines

Computers can help if we use them to create abstract social machines on the Web: processes in which the people do the creative work and the machine does the administration…

Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, 1999

Social Machine: Games

Turning your fun into their money!

Social Machine: Science

Millions of galaxies classified

The whole “Zooniverse”

Social machine research

Web 3.0 and Social Machines

• See Trend 1

Social Data Goes Here

Tetherless World Constellation

Government Data Sharing: Year 2

Tetherless World Constellation

Government Data Sharing: Year 3

2012 so far:

http://www.gouv.frReleased 300,000 French databases

US/India to release Open Government Platform

Kenya announces “Open Africa” project

Distribution Statement

Communities consuming Open Government Data

Social Machine: Government

Social Machine: Improving Government

Mobile Web

Trend 2:Mobile goes Social

Mobile + Social • The device formerly known as a cell phone

– Knows me• where I am now • where I was yesterday (and a bunch of days before)• where I'll be tomorrow (and into my planned future)• What my environment is like

– Am I moving or still; quiet or noisy;

• who and what I like• whose opinions I trust• how I like to see things• what other dfkcp's are around (and who they belong to)• …

– Knows what is out there and how to get it• That whole data cloud thing, remember Web 3.0 back in the 2010s

Tetherless World

Trend 3: Speech is finally (almost) here

Two Way Machine Translation

By 2020 you will be able to talk to me in Hindi और मैं� अं�ग्रे�जी मैं� जीवा ब दें�गे�using just our machines formerly known as cell phones

Trend 4: Bigger and Bigger data

Exponential Data growth

• In 2012 we will generate more data than in the whole previous history of humankind– In 2013 we will do that again– In 2014 we will do that again– …

Trend 5:Semantic, Linked Data is coming

Crazy (sort of) Prediction

• Something unlikely will make things exciting all over again– Machines that function

like the brain– Machines that interface

to the brain– Quantum computers

that can change the basis of parallel computing

Prediction 7: (A safe bet)

IIT Kharagpur

IIT, RoorkeeIIT, Madras

BHU

Some 2000 – 2010 Famous Webbies

Future Famous Webbies?

You are the future of the Web!

• Right Place – India is becoming a major Web power

• Right Age– You are a digital native

• Right Fields – Engineer/Computer Scientist/Engineer

• BUT EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY…

WE are the Web!

• Right Species: – The network of people is the future of the World

Wide Web

– And that future has started already

Questions?