It seems that everybody online has their own definition of what Web 3.0 is going to be. You can go to any one of hundreds of tech blogs and find all sorts of lists of future technologies and applications that are going to be the “next wave”. And with these come an equal number of complex philosophies about how our lives will change for the better (or worse) when all of this spiffing new stuff happens, er... sometime in the future. All of this is good stuff and a lot of it is probably prescient to a high level of accuracy. But I wonder if all the talk of technologies and specific applications misses the point somehow.

As I have stated in the highly touted (and now valuable collectors item) first episode of this podcast, I like to reduce all things down to the point where they become simple. This is where I live and this is where I think. So coming from that place, where the buck stops, as it were, I have always looked at the development of the web from a very fundamental level, like everything else. The bottom line in this case is what we have done, what we are doing now and what we are going to do in the future. Or, to put it even more simply,

Web 1.0 - the internet as an information source
Web 2.0 - the internet as a communications platform
Web 3.0 - the internet as an entertainment medium

The technologies that have fueled and will fuel these stages are irrelevant. The real point is the purpose to which they have been and will be put.

And with that little preamble I now give you yet another prophesy of Web 3.0 as envisioned by yours truly, albeit a very different version than you’re likely to have heard before.

With Web 2.0 we have seen a revolution in social interaction that has brought people together like never before. We now use the web to communicate almost any aspect of our personal lives to anyone who wants to listen. Every day someone comes up with another way for us to share everything with everybody. And apart from all the miniscule details of our ordinary lives, we also blog and podcast about almost any aspect of the world around us and then pass all this information around the web like currency, even rating and voting on it. You might say that the internet has become an incredible platform to explore every aspect of the real world we live in and every aspect of ourselves as people. So what’s next?

While at the moment we may be entertained by all of the things mentioned above, I believe that the novelty factor will eventually wear off, as these things become more and more commonplace. And this will pave the way forward into Web 3.0, which in my vision, will see the addition of some fictional content into the picture.

It is clear that we are rapidly moving towards a world where all media will eventually be distributed online, and that everything will be consumed on demand, whether from your TV screen or your computer monitor. This is all good stuff and I wholeheartedly approve. But what we are talking about here is really just a revolution in the distribution of traditional entertainment. What I want to talk about is an entirely new type of entertainment.

In todays world a creative concept is realised and produced as any one of many media types, whether it be video, music, blog, game, website, podcast, etc. But what if a new creative concept is too big to be contained by any one medium? Perhaps this new concept is a continuing story, with evolving characters and no real planned ending? Sounds a bit like a soap opera, doesn’t it? Well let’s take the idea of a soap opera, make it vastly more intelligent, considerably more sophisticated, and then imagine releasing it on the web, on ALL of the media types mentioned above, with each contributing just a part of the whole picture. You now have a piece of continuing entertainment that uses the entire internet as it’s delivery platform.

For the sake of brevity I call this new method “webscape”, for lack of any better term, and because it DOES need a preferably short name. A webscape uses any and all media for the purpose of delivering a continuing story and building an alternate reality around it. A similar concept has been explored before in what are known as Alternate Reality Games or ARGs. These differ from webscapes however, in some important ways. ARGs were initially developed as psychological exercises, and have both a start AND and ending. They also bring their stories into the real world and involve things like receiving letters and telephone calls from people posing as game characters. Webscapes, on the other hand, exist on the web only and involve absolutely no participation in the real world other than turning on your computer. ARGs are also primarily games, and generally involve a great deal of cryptography and other puzzle solving. While webscapes may also include gameplay elements, they do not have to, and this certainly is not the focus of the medium.

Any kind of web deliverable content from any location can combine to create the alternate world of a webscape. The whole thing is held together by carefully coordinated concept, plot, storyline and, hopefully, by an enthusiastic community. The webscape is a BIG concept. It is big, because in theory it is a "show" that never ends, within an infrastructure and world that has no boundaries and expands indefinitely. The delivery and interaction mechanisms are there to support this in any way necessary, and from anywhere. Whatever is needed, is used, as long as it can be delivered on the web. This can even include other people's sites and products, such as games or virtual worlds.

In a webscape the line between what is real and what is fiction is necessarily blurry. The point is to create a world that is so real, characters that are so interesting and plots that are so compelling that the process of browsing the webscape and its fictional content is a seamless experience alongside browsing “real” web content. Webscape sites and other media will always appear to be real to anyone not privy to their fictional nature.

So why do we need webscapes and the alternate realities built around them? Well, for the same reasons that we need any kind of entertainment. I think you can figure that one out. But I think the time has come to create a new type of entertainment that is indigenous to the web and it’s accompanying technologies, in much the same way as the TV show was to broadcast television and the movie, originally at least, to the cinema theatre. Times are changing. We no longer have to have the limitations of running times, column length, the capacity of any media, allotted time slots, scheduling or any kind of censoring body. We can deliver content with no boundaries, that crosses every barrier that has ever existed for traditional media. Most importantly, we now have the opportunity to create a new paradigm for entertainment that fits into the way people are already living their lives online. It just makes sense.

If you find that you still don’t understand the concept of webscapes, don’t worry. This is likely to be the case, as historically, very few people ever have when I’ve tried to explain it. Especially members of the always wise and trustworthy financial industry. This is the curse of being a visionary and being ahead of your time. Unless you’ve got a pile of cash to fund your own ideas, you’re going to have a hard time getting people’s heads around something truly original. Unfortunately, truly original is all I’ve ever been interested in.

I have however, created a project at the collaboration site Amazee, for my own webscape, Spindrix. If you think you understand what I’m on about, join me at www.amazee.com/spindrix and lend a hand creating the next generation of online entertainment. Or if you still don’t get it (it’s OK, really), come on over anyway and maybe things will become a bit clearer. The link to the Spindrix project is also on the front page at mankindsucks.com. Bring your imagination.