Five Web Trends Into 3.0 (2)

2) Web resource, diverging

Divergence is the act of moving away in different direction from a common point. The continuous divergence of the Web resource types is ineluctable when the Web enters 3.0.

One way to evaluate Web resources is to measure their ability of productivity, i.e., how feasible a resource can be manufactured to produce information asset. In essence, any Web resource is a combination of data, service, and link. By divergence it leads to the newer ways of resource representation so that the represented resources become more productive for further information manufacturing. This progress is a consistent process in Web evolution.

A question is, however, that which new types of Web resources emerging would be essential to foster Web 3.0. In the other words, which of them would be the fundamental building blocks of Web 3.0 as if the manual tags and the RSS of Web 2.0.

Although no conclusions yet, there are a few interesting candidates. For example, the mobile data representation formats such as the iPhone data structure. By storing data in these transportation formats, the data becomes universally mobile computable. Though it is still fairly a distance from the real ubiquitous computing, the advancements increase the productivity of the mobile Web data, a particular portion of the Web data.

Another example is Google Wave. Google Wave shows a new type of service resources that can effectively consume many typical Web 2.0 resources by allowing these Web 2.0 resources running on top of it. When we say the revolutionary change Google Wave brings (or will bring), it indeed tells that Google Wave examples what the services in Web 3.0 might be looked like. Its real innovation is not how the service works, but what it consumes!

By Wikipedia, the divergent evolution is the accumulation of differences between groups which can lead to the formation of new species, usually a result of diffusion of the same species adapting to different environments, leading to natural selection defining the success of specific mutations. This definition is indeed also applicable to the ongoing divergent evolution of Web resources into 3.0.

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