Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Web 4.0

In one of my earlier post about What is beyond Web 3.0, I did mention that after Web 3.0 it is going to be Web 4.0? I also mentioned there that Web 4.0 will be about man-machine communication. There have been few discussions since then as what is the meaning of man-machine communication and how different it is going to be in future.

Before we discuss this lets take a look at what is been done so far.
  • Web 1.0 Theme was You. You produce content, You manage the server, You are the producer and I am the consumer.
  • Web 2.0 Theme is We. Lets discuss, Lets interact, Lets build our network. In this both the parties actively participate.
  • Web 3.0 Theme is Me. Its all about ME, my Environment(s), my personal space, people who can see me etc. We are talking about personalizing the Web (and Internet) to suit our individual needs.
So the question arises here is what is left for Web 4.0 to achieve. Well as I mentioned earlier it is all about Intuitive Man-Machine communication. The communication is not just via the command mode, but its based on the thought process generated within us. Sounds like a Science-Fiction isn't it? Well to your surprise many pieces of this puzzle are already in place. Its just that we need to start putting them together and tweaking them to suit each others need. How are we going to change human? We don't have to, thats the best part of this.

The Sigularity Institute is working on similar research projects for advancement in Artificial Intelligence. But that's not the whole point here. That just solves one side of the problem i.e. making machine understand the language. But we humans must have a way to translate our thoughts into that form.

I am sure many of us must have heard or gone through ECG test sometime in our life. We all know what it does. My thought of building such a communication channel starts from ECG sensors fitted to human body when Wearable Computer becomes a common man thing. Using those sensors we can capture the signals generated by human. The generated signals then will be converted to Bluetooth signal by attaching a small device to the computer we wear. We can pair the human bluetooth device with the computer (machine) and establish a communication channel between them.

Of course there will be requirements to build interpreters which will translate the ECG signals to appropriate software code and vice versa. Did I say vice-versa? Yes I mean it. Recent studies in medical sciences have proven that if we generate the similar impulse in our brain we get the same muscles stimulated as though it is happening in front of our eyes. Watch the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know" and you will understand what I am talking here.

Sounds like a whole new channel opening. Well this is going to be the future of communication. I am going to come back with some more thoughts on this and other related technologies.

Until Next Time... :)

3 comments:

KA said...

Very interesting thoughts Samir. Looks like we are living in very interesting times. The next 10-20 years are going to be even more fun. Feel like our physical evolution process is done and we are transcending to the mental and spiritual evolution. Being able to google our minds is such a good idea.

Rediscovering the fact that all organisms and entities via a network of "consciousness" seems like very eminent possibility. Of course whenver the latest research doesn't seem to have an answer would urge us all to delve in some of our ancient literaturs .. Yoga Sutra, Vedas esp. Upanishads and some so called mythology smight have good conceptual framework which we might be rebuilding from scratch.

Santiago GL said...

I think what you call Web 3.0 n 4.0 are things we'll be seeing as part of the Web 2.0 real revolution.
There's a lot of hype surrounding Web 2.0, but the true is that this new paradigm, as such, is far from realizing.
SemanticDBs are now feasible and when they begin to become available , we'll see the start of a new era of communication between human-human, human-machine, human-environment, machine-environment.

I am not from India, but I agree Atul about "delve in some of our ancient literaturs .. Yoga Sutra, Vedas esp. Upanishads and some so called mythology smight have good conceptual framework".

Samir Kumar Mishra said...

Agree with you both,

After researching on this topic for 3 yrs almost I am kinda coming to believe that we are going back to ancient Greek philosophy. Its just that we seem to have forgotten the century old literatures.