While much has been speculated about the future of the web, not much has been written about its potential, but not much about its actual applications on the web. Many web experts have are beginning to champion the Web 3.0 as an physical-to-digital multifaceted connection “web of things.”
Linking the Physical World to the World Wide Web
However, linking the Web and physical objects is not a novel vision of the web. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) when physical objects were “tagged” through bar-codes to directly to pages on the Web containing information about the objects. Web 3.0 promises to take this existing approach and expand it to a more ubiquitous approach to the web browsing experience.
Although the web of things establishes connectivity in a variety of constrained networking environments, the next logical objective is to build on top of network connectivity by focusing on the application layer. This essentially means that Web 3.0 will not be about searching, but ultimately about finding. The underlying web infrastructure will need to be an organized into an intelligent semantic web that interweaves different languages and dialects of web programming technology -- an interconnected system of information hubs -- unlike its current setup of disconnected information silos.
Embedding Devices to the Digital World
The Web of Things requires us to extend the existing Web so that real-world objects and embedded devices can blend seamlessly into one another. Instead of using the Web protocols solely as a transport protocol, physical devices would ultimately become integral part of the Web by using HTTP as an application layer protocol.
Web 3.0 looks very much like a “smart web” – that is, smart objects being able to run on itself without human interaction. Researchers envision that for the web to become a smart space, two things need to happen: direct Web connectivity between devices (with the web actually integrated into these devices) or through connections through a proxy (physical objects require connectivity through this main proxy, similar to a satellite dish).
Social Devices in a Web-Connected World
As embedded Web servers living within such “social devices” giving native support for local platforms already exists, a Web server can also be installed into each device, making no need to translate HTTP requests from Web clients into the appropriate protocol for the different devices. As a result, such web-connected devices can be directly integrated and make their application programming interfaces (APIs) directly accessible on the Web.
Therefore, whereas much of the current web is very much a disorganized web of links, for the “web of things” to function, information needs to be further standardized, very much like a library catalogue which organizes and shaped the physical collection of library books.
Allan Cho - I am an academic librarian. I research and write about emerging technologies, educational trends,and popular culture in the media.
