Is there value in “Web X.0" jargon?

And can we predict the future?

The crew at biobeats are building software that listens to your body, then gives you music that will compliment it. The idea is to give you a better understanding of what your body is trying to tell you. It’s context creating content.

I’m obsessed with context.

I’ve been obsessed with it since I discovered Gary Vaynerchuk. My boss once called this “making technology more human”, but that’s not it.

I want to make tech work for you.

At the right time.

In the right way.

We couldn’t do this in “Web 1.0", where we were focused on content. We would have never been able to do this in “Web 2.0", where we were focused on making content contextual. So now, in “Web 3.0", it’s purely context creating content.

There’s no value in “Web X.0”.

It’s 2013, it’s simply an official bullshit idea. From the get go, we didn’t give the term defined constraints and definitions. We simply did not know what was going to happen. In retrospect, we could have made it globally recognizable for engineers, marketers, business leaders, everyone.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the mind behind WWW says “Web X.0” is jargon. Jargon provides limited value and accessibility to these genuinely powerful ideas.

Fuck jargon. Keep it simple.

From here on: Market Web 1.0 as Content

Duh. It’s the phase of the web that we were going through as the net grew. We were offloading all our books and ideas to a place where it would have a longer life. This is the most accessible because we’ve already seen this phase wholly evolved. Wikipedia is the prime example.

From here on: Market Web 2.0 as Content in a Context

This is the phase that’s most associated with social media. Think about ideas that have a reason to be there, and were put there by a human. This one, surprisingly, is only beginning to become accessible. People who moderately invest themselves in online services understand this. The growing global society on the internet understand this. Facebook, Flipboard, Twitter are great examples.

From here on: Market Web 3.0 as a Context creating Content

Real thought leaders understand this. People who have been actively invested since day one. People who use IFTTT to make prince references or people who use Biobeats to understand themselves, people who are using UP by Jawbone or FitBit, Nike+, or Google Glass. People building algorithms to deliver content to people.

Lumi.do is a great example of a Web 2.0 technology AND a strong Web 3.0 technology. It’s 2.0 because it provides you content in a contextual manner. It’s 3.0 because it wouldn’t work without your browser history. You seemingly don’t know where it comes from. There are no profile pictures on articles shared by the people you follow, it’s just silently delivered contextualized content. The service depends on that context to create the content.

Lumi.do is genius. It’s the best service that exists right now.
It’s always so fresh.

The most concise quote for Web 3.0 I can think of was posted yesterday on Wired.com:

The algorithms are acting less like a card catalog for the web and more like an author. It’s a living creator.

What if Web 4.0 is Perfect Context?

Ever played Heavy Rain? Think of Norman Jayden and how he uses ARI to change his entire environment to augment where he works — his context.Oh yeah, and what does ARI stand for?

Added Reality Interface.

Not Augmented. Such a subtle catch.

Maybe it’s like this: if you can’t see where the context comes from, it’s Web 4.0. Maybe it’s because you can create context on the fly. Maybe you upload your environment and your friends can put themselves in your context. Maybe you can literally download someones life, and play it back for perfect empathy.