Technology enabling user generated webs

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Things like “Web 1.0“, “Web 2.0” are evolutionary memes. Memes are almost always a “marketing hype”, but they tend to catch on if they capture enough of the zeitgeist.

The Web 2.0 concept moves internet users from a position of passenger to a position of participant.

Selves are distributed entities

The idea is to be able to create applications without having to solve data representation problems, to enable automated and flexible integration between public and private data sources. Local webs could be set up, by anyone, anytime and thus generate Web 3.0.

It is very dynamic, with pointers that point to bubbles of states (data) that come categorised and tagged with a consistent ontology. This is one of the dreams of symbolic Artificial Intelligence and why some people call Web 3.0 “the semantic Web.”

The meme? Where do people believe the meme came from?

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

And as far as computer models go, one of the big sea changes that took place after Gödel, Escher, Bach came out in 1979 was the enormous swing in computer modeling away from what they now call symbolic AI [artificial intelligence] to connectionism or neural nets. That was a very big thing that took place in the 1980s. It didn’t invalidate or stop the work in symbolic AI, but it simply opened up a whole new dimension, so to speak. That’s sort of a sea change, because people who at one time would never have thought about the architecture of the brain or neurons or anything like that became all involved in it, and in fact I think it had one bad consequence, which is that a lot of people got so deeply involved in the idea that “everything is neurons” that they sort of forgot about the idea that when you’re trying to explain how, let’s say, a heart works, you don’t focus on the cells of the heart, but you focus on the overarching fact that it pumps, that a heart has a higher-level description. You can look at the compartments of the heart and the way in which they interact and so forth and see how it pumps without descending all the way to the level of its microscopic constituents, and I think that the art of explaining the mind is going to be one of being able to find the right levels of description, being able to sometimes refer to things that are microscopic, but not always. Not always referring to things at the level of neurons, sometimes referring to things that are sort of symbolic—like words, concepts, analogies—and not always being able to descend below that. I think it’s a very deep and subtle art, and I think that over the years we’ll get there, and we’re getting there. I can’t say there’s been any giant revolution yet in any of these fields, but I think we’re making small, steady progress. ~ From An interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter

Will Web 3.0 happen?

I don’t know. It might. Self-reference with the understanding that selves are distributed temporary entities, seems more important than ever before for a lot of people.

From NEW CONCEPTS FOR TOLTEC NAGUALS SHAMANS

The programming inflicted on beings from birth is the greatest bondage in existence. It dictates how life should be lived and tries to put life into labeled boxes, reducing the great adventure of the discovery of self to mediocrity and boredom.

Social conditioning is the attempt by man to hold onto what he thinks of as sanity. He fears he might lose all frame of reference to his own identity within the vastness of existence. To let go of all social conditioning will eliminate identity. But it is not the loss of identity that is madness, but rather having identity in the first place.

When we let go of our conditioned identity, we find the expansiveness of our awareness. Within this expanse, we play many roles. [Note for Satir people: think parts parties.] Identifying with any of them is to attempt to put the ocean in a bucket.

To avoid social conditioning, simply question everything and observe the origin of every decision and action.

The Web 3.0 concept could be a great playground for this part of the zeitgeist to play in. Yet if Web 3.0 does happen, the still imposing war-work-machine (military-industrial-complex) is likely going to experience tremendous security problems, not to mention individual identity thefts and other privacy breaches among participants on the web. Web 3.0 would not be a replacement, but rather more extension of what already exists and many of the security and privacy problems of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 haven’t even been solved yet.

… I would argue that we are already at the next evolution of the web, and yet it’s not about semantics. It’s about context. This new phase of the web has largely been catalyzed by two breakthroughs: advances in the power and reach of mobile computing, as well as what Mark Zuckerberg calls “the social graph.” Both of these lend not meaning but context to data, and that is a very powerful thing … ~ from The Next Phase is Not Web 3.0 (jamieforrest.com)

The part of the zeitgeist that this seems to relate to is that people search less for meaning, because to do so would be to assign labels to the unknowable, trapping us into taking life at face value. By following “heart” as it responds in the stillness of the mind to the oceans of energies vibrating at various frequencies, people practice watching only for the next step. Watching for clarity in how to respond and contribute. Understanding not needed. Understanding requires a fixed frame of reference not available in a cosmos where every thought changes the direction of the river. Cooperation seems key in this contemporary “part” of our collective zeitgeist.

By the way, my 2 cents

I have not lost my mind, and I have no intention of doing so. Protection from to supremacy addicted hypochondriacs is still required at this point in time. After all, see what came back to Bradley as a result of his social conditioning that transparency and real civilian control are basic ingredients of a democracy that works as intended.

The intention of democracy is understood to be one without public divide. The masses are to be elevated as equals – with all decisions made to support human rights, not just the supposed elite. These intentions, however, are not always achieved. Prejudice is as common as breathing within the world. Individuals battle over ideologies, social status, wealth and ethnicity. First impressions are made with suspicion (and with little concern given for reevaluations later on). Personal bias shades most debates. And opinions are immediately discredited when offered from the ones most hated.

And this has led to a stagnation of politics. Too often are individuals lured by candidates who offer similar backgrounds and experiences, rather than the ones who provide the most sensible ideas. Trust is granted to those we can recognize and is snatched away from those we do not. This is not productive within the search for a strong government, however, or the subsequent strong changes that come from that. ~ The End of Prejudice: Internet Democracy

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