Web 2.D'Oh!

Having grown up in the Midwest, I had no occasion to give earthquakes much thought. As a result of this unfamiliarity, I assumed for years that an earthquake registering 8.1 on the Richter scale was about 10 percent more severe than one registering 7.1 and 20 percent more violent than a 6.1 earthquake.

Wrong.

For reasons unknown to me, Richter decided it was more appropriate to classify earthquakes on a logarithmic scale. Imagine my surprise then when I learned that this implied that an earthquake registering 8.1 on the Richter was 50 times more powerful than a 7.1 earthquake and 2,500 times more powerful than a 6.1 earthquake.

I provide this brief tutorial in logarithmic functions because it is a useful metaphor in considering how exponential advances in a number of technologies will shake the world of business as the Internet transitions from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and, eventually, Web 3.0.

In spite of the Internet bubble, few people would say that the Internet hasn’t changed business, society, and many of our lives in meaningful ways. But as unsettling as this may (or may not) have been, it has so far been the equivalent of a technological tremor -- it has gotten people’s attention, but a good number of businesses have gone about their daily routines with only minor modifications.

The transition to the next stage, or what is sometimes referred to as Web 2.0 or the semantic Web, will be as different as a 7.0 earthquake is from a 6.0 earthquake. Or as Homer Simpson would say, "D'Oh!"

The next iteration of the World Wide Web will be about relating relevant information to and from real-world objects, and employing intelligent software agents to help users find, store, and combine information in more meaningful ways. The difference can be explained thusly: Today we find information via Google and other Websites. At the next level, information will find us.

Wireless, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, next-generation photonic computer chips, data storage, networks of smart sensors, and super-smart algorithms are all pushing this vision of "the Internet of things" toward reality at an accelerating pace.

Consider the following examples. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) wants WiFi to be capable of transmitting information at at least 100 Mbit/s; but some companies, such as NTT DoCoMo, are already looking at rates in the neighborhood of 2.5 Gbit/s -- which is fast enough to deliver a DVD in seconds.

Alas, receiving Tom Cruise’s latest film via the Internet is only the beginning because IBM has already demonstrated an optical chipset capable of data transmission rates of 160 Gbit/s. For those of you counting at home, this is a staggering 1600-fold improvement over today’s technology.

Of course, this is just one technology. Today, Intel and others are cramming 800 million transistors onto a single chip. The semiconductor industry expects to continue to double this number every 24 months for at least the next decade. If you are wondering what a 32-fold improvement in computer processing will mean, it has been estimated that at this level a single computer chip will approach the computing capacity of the human brain.

Alas, these chips won’t just be reserved for our laptops and cellphones. The development of RFID tags suggests that soon they and computer chips will be embedded directly into a host of everyday objects, including consumer products, household appliances, and automobiles.

Combine this development with both the aforementioned progress in wireless technology and exponential advances in data storage and algorithms -- software programs designed to make sense of the reams of data that the RFID tags and computer chips will be collecting and then find patterns and discern insights from that information -- and this implies we will be connected to our surrounding environments in almost unimaginable ways.

Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, once said, "When the rate of change outside the company is faster than the rate of change inside the company, the end is near." Well, an exponential earthquake is rapidly approaching and to survive every business must first recognize that it is now living near the equivalent of the San Andreas Fault, and then begin shoring up the foundations of its operations to withstand the destructive force of these accelerating technologies.

— Jack Uldrich, Author, futurist