Web 2.0, 3.0 ....N.0 (AKA How I learnt to love Google and say No to versioning of Web at the same time)!

Some one forwarded me this NYT article on Web 3.0. The man who created this Buzz word called Web 2.0 and defined it in his blog, Tim O'Reilly, promptly responded to this article. As some one who thinks he works in semantic web and web 2.0 and Web services based on SOAP, I got a few thoughts too. Thanks to Web 2.0 and collective intelligence, I have blog to rant out.
There is now this huge debate on Web 2.0 and Semantic Web. On one hand, it is so surprising to see the research community pay so much attention either towards aligning to Web 2.0 or towards demonstrating the separation their work has from this "Marketing Buzz word". It doesnt happen often. This proves the validation of the things that make Web 2.0 towards scientific research in a way.

Tim's blog captured a popular perception and belief that Web 2.0, as defined by Tim in his blog, is indeed a big first realistic step towards realizing the semantic web. I agree and disagree with the note that Steve wrote. Web2.0 as it stands today is not semantic web in entirety. However, it is a first and important step. The technology concepts like Ajax should not be seen as the only defining points of Web 2.0. A lot of web applications, use fancy UI and rebrand themselves as web 2.0, conveniently ignoring the important aspect called "Harnessing Collective Intelligence.". Again Semantic Web is not just in OWL or RDF but rather in modeling that collective intelligence in a manner that is usable and understandable and extensible by everyone else.
Its a bit surprising that some one like Steve would project the impact of SOAP as far as Web 4.0. It is not hard to see SOAP being used as the choice XML format in communicating for REST. Its just a matter of time before some one came up with a js implementation of SOAP. That would give us to use the message level features of SOAP more on demand on the client side as and when needed. Create SOAP payload when needed and just pump the POX other times.
This post will continue...