The future of the world 3.0 is in my hands...

“The future of the world is in my hands...And I'm modest about it,” I recently stated. And I can tell you I am not wrong. Look outside the window, how many of those people who walked just by do you know or recognize? One, two…none? Think now again of the people spread all over the world. Do you know them? Do you know what makes them laugh, what pulls at their heart strings? Do you know that one of them was an aspiring soccer player turned accountant? Do you know that one of them became the CEO of his own company at the age of 19, but donated all his money to become a regular kid again? Do you know?

Really WHAT do you know?

But you have a chance to learn and answer; and this chance is this one lifetime. People around me feel very technology handicapped so much so that they would not want to hear the T word. But the only choice you have to make the most of this life is through accepting technology. At the moment your newest friend could be a thousand miles away or in the next dormitory room, but our culture has made us too cold to get up and say hi to the stranger next door. In fact if a stranger would come up to you I am sure you will squint and indeed be perturbed by the free-willed action. The same guy pops into your chat window or leaves you a message in your MySpace/Orkut/Ryze/ guest book and see yourself happily responding.

Accept the world has changed and so has our socio-cultural dynamics. And it is going to change even further. Social networks have already taken us by storm and so has avatar technology. We have created false or more politically correct – virtual selves on the Internet. I am not talking about just the fakes in chat rooms, but the reality of having a second lease of life in virtual worlds created by Second Life and the sorts. You can earn money, have sex and even have drugs on the Internet! “Users of virtual drugs have reported the effects of these virtual drugs to be surprisingly realistic and lifelike,” is what Brian Shuster, chief Utherverse feels. Even virtual sex sells. Second Life confessed pervert and businessman ‘Stroker Serpentine’ a.ka. Kevin Alderman sold his ‘amorous’ technology for $50,000!

Clearly, our perception of reality has been altered.

And that now brings us to the topic of the semantic web or WEB 3.0. Our computers are still too dumb inspite of these sweeping changes that we are still grappling with. We are now building newer ways to understand the world – and that is WEB 3.0. We still rely on human intelligence to sift through Google search results, but what if you are hurried and all you want to say is: I need a flat for my family of me, my husband, mum and 3-year-old twins. But my budget cannot exceed Rs. 35,00,000 and it must not be more than 10 kilometers away from my office in Santa Cruz West, Mumbai. Google this and you’ll be lost in tones of data or perhaps lack of it. The semantic web will understand you and your needs and then answer you. It will intelligently understand that when you ask your operating system to “open files on my investments” it needs to open up data on mutual funds, stock ops, fixed deposits etc and not have you look up each.

Apart from the intelligent semantic web we desperately need and will have open architecture in the future where the programming power is in the hand of the user – as I said in the beginning the future in our two hands. . So we surely need:

• A universal operating system – that means one common Windows/Mac/Linux platform. And not sold in CDs, but just pure downloads off the web;

• Web conferencing facilities that are automatically updated and scale up with need – this means businesses not only close deals in real time over the globe but also nuture new ideas, recruit talent and talk to shareholders inside their homes and bounce off ideas with them;

• An avatar system that can travel within many virtual worlds enabling users to interact – and not just within closed games, but replacing email ids with virtual 3D representations.

This is not your future world. This OUR world today − thinking tomorrow A.K.A WEB 3.0.

And NOW you know!