Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 for dummies

Many of us do not know what Web 2.0 is about, and people are already talking about Web 3.0.
Explanations are often technically oriented, and miss the basic points. The following is inevitably a simplification.

For Web 2.0 we can draw from our direct experiences, if we have used Blog, Wiki, YouTube, or similar.
The users participate, collaborate and provide the content. In contrast, Web 1.0 was mainly "read-only" for the clients. The webmasters and web authors provide all the contents. Interactivity was limited to comments, forms.
Mashups of content or micro-content became possible in Web 2.0.

Web 3.0 is predicted by some to be the real thing. Some believe in the magic of numbers, Windows 1.0 was buggy, Windows 2.0 was only a short interim period, it was Windows 3.0 that became widely used, and so 3 is the magic number. Will the same happen with Web 3.0?
Other believes Web 3.0 is just hype. In reality, even the experts have difficulties understanding Web 3.0,
and there is no agreement on what Web 3.0 is.

One good try is by saying that Web 3.0 is when meaning or semantics is added to the web.
The idea of a Semantic Web was put forward by none other than the father of the World Wide Web himself, Tim Berners-Lee, who is also director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Semantic Web adds meaning to data by using meta-data, data about data. The result is a computer understandable content. Right now, when we search, we can use keywords, combinations thereof, restrictions to particular areas such as books, films, quotes, etc., but even with the most sophisticated Google Hack, the search is not so intelligent. We can search how Richard Gere or some other celebrity is connected to Buddhism, but almost impossible to understand the context of the connection, other than words appearing on the same web page. We have to download the actual pages, and read them ourselves to know the details.
If computers understand content, it would allow giving better answers to what we are searching.
The present Google search engine is not semantically based, but I am sure Google has already made preparations for a new advanced kind of search.

Critics of the Semantic Web say that it is too much work to develop the meta-data, and until there is a critical mass of webs using semantics, the whole idea is just theoretical.

The Yomiuri article quoted above went on to suggest the idea of an Executable Web as the basis for Web 3.0. Executable Web means executing applications defined by the users.
Phil Wainewright used the term applications on demand for basically the same idea.
Users can build applications from services from providers, calling the service API's in an easy to use way.
Application architects have known this as SOA (serviced oriented architecture), but the SOA in Web 3.0 simple to use. It will provide mashups not just of data but also of applications.

Is this the real Web 3.0?

Recommended further reading: Web 3.0: You say you’re on an infolution? Well, you know…