Semantic Web will be more dominating than you could have ever imagined

Imagine an organisation with almost no infrastructure, sufficient enough to be called as a registered office. Almost all employees of this organisation operate out of home. Their connection/interaction with peers and other co-workers happens thro a web based virtual network where they can not only interact seamlessly with each other but also if required talk & see each other over the ‘web’, effortlessly. The conference room becomes a conference desk. Your interface is only a browser. This means you don't have a Pentium/AMD processor, a hard drive and a motherboard etc. In fact you don’t buy any of them at all. You only purchase an LCD, a keyboard and perhaps a mouse (if not already built-in in a keyboard). That is what a ‘computer’ will be minus CPU. An LCD has set of USB connectors, and one of them you'd use to connect to your ISP. Thus no desktop OS and no more (re)booting time! We will have a similar model like a free web-based email service. Now the ISPs or web companies will provide the infrastructure for you (a virtual HD and required computing speed) on their servers, free of cost. All the tools required for you to work on, and be productive, will be on the web. People will connect and use on-demand software - some free, some paid – on their virtual space.

The browser will track each action done by the knowledge-worker on the web - I am assuming here you guys know what a semantic web will be. The browser relays your action and your ISP stores the data systemically into a ‘cloud’, which in turn is available on the web. Slowly the karma of a web-worker is populated. Slowly one more human capital is added to the wired-web. A glocal emerges. A glocal starts leaving her strain on the web as & when she works. Btw much of this has been happening already. Now this is exciting: The phantom, your browser, starts capturing your expression. If, in some cases, the browser cannot derive the expression directly then it will do with in-built NLP. The reporting officers, on-demand, will process their team data and examine the health of their team. The HR folks will evaluate the cognitive bandwidth of employees. By this time they map the intellects of their knowledge-worker effectively now. The CEO, with super-rich BI tool, ascertains the mood of his organisation. The stakeholders too are hooked on a similar system. The stock markets now react based on this derived social-graph. The visualization software dopes in further to the dynamics. And so on … you will be watched not by any camera or a third person but through a keyboard & a mouse. After all, your mind interfaces with these electronic systems mostly through your fingers. Isn’t it?

On the social side, much of this is happening already with sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google etc. capturing user behavior time after time. Also some search engines have already been built around semantics, viz. hakia & wolfram-alpha. Will organisations adopt this social & semantic model within their units? Will one day work and social life be all on one stage available transparently? The world is already a smaller place. How much more will it shrink?

Of course there could be downside of having such a system in place (data security, safeguarding IPs etc.) for commercial organisations. But let me tell you: if banks can go online (24x7) then everything is possible. So will companies, in future, adopt such kind of more-or-less complete virtual model? Some companies, few years ago, who didn’t entertain the idea of hosting their confidential data with a 3rd party solution provider have realized the benefits of having such a extended system. The SaaS model, the cloud computing model and others are not only being explored but also being capitalized to the fullest. The mantra now is ‘outsource the overheads but keep the intellects’.

Welcome to virtual reality. Errr ... if that makes you think about a typical gaming stuff, no I don’t mean that. It simply means living-on-the-web. Ah, again, you got it wrong! No, I don’t mean the Second Life concept either. I meant an sound enterprise ecosystem where humans will interact, meet, and ideate with humans, more often, on the web - thro a browser than thick clients or physical means. The web (companies) will adopt what organisations adopted few years ago - open door policy … thus emerging as a transparent-web. So don’t be surprised if you find out, someday, that your e-DNA already exists on the web :)

20 years and later, the web continues to evolve

20 years ago, the Internet started with the objective to "share information". But unfortunately the internet workers drifted from this basic objective. Websites were:

• Static, initially. One way information. Me to you. Nothing went back.
• Then came Dynamic websites. The birth of E-Commerce. 2 way information. Me to you. You to me. Nothing more than that. No feedback mechanism
• Then there was a birth of Interactive websites. We call the web now 'a social workplace'. Me to you. You to me. Me to them. Them to us.

Now 20 years later the social element or the so called 'sharing' aspect of websites re-appear. So does it make you think:

• Why did it take so long for the internet to reach to this objective?
• Why did the objective shift from information sharing to information gathering?
• What will be the shape of the internet 5 - 10 years down the line?

So why is this happening now? With increasing competition & booming economy retaining knowledge in the 21st century has become critical. Many organizations are facing challenge not only of retaining knowledge but also retaining their knowledge workers. At the same time effective and fast communication has become equally important in the Knowledge Economy. Jargons like 'Business at the Speed of Thought' have been the buzz words. How can we possibly achieve this?

The emerging social internet makes it possible - The Web 2.0 - perhaps has the answers. When we go to the largest Virtual World today, the World Wide Web, we mostly find contents co-created and collaborated by many people. Therefore many questions arise:

• Where are all the people in these virtual spaces? We don’t see them!
• Why do we not see them who are at the same time on the Virtual Workspaces?
• And why can we not meet with these people who are with us ON these websites when we are also there?

Perhaps, these questions needs a grave thought. On the other hand there are many knowledge workers shaping up what the Web was 10 years ago. Or even 5 years ago. There is a fundamental change from where websites were and what they are now. Some experts are even envisioning Web 3.0! Ever thought about how the web will be in 3.0 space? A 3 dimensional space - as an analogy? Hmmm ...