Thanks so much for stopping by to check out TechPudding lately! If you just happened to be bored enough to keep track of my blogging, you’ll know that I wrote almost every day from February to April and then virtually disappeared from the blogosphere until now. This is because the end of the year brought some exciting and time consuming changes. I found out that I will be joining a team in the fall that is responsible for planning and implementing technology integration and use throughout a school board of over 200 schools. I am extra excited because I get to share ideas and learn with and from some very insightful brains. So needless to say, the last two months of the year were very busy as I wrapped up my technology lead role in my school. When I finally had the chance to catch my breath, I took full advantage of it and have enjoyed a summer of laid back relaxation.

So now it’s time to wake up my circuits and get back into the swing of things. Here it goes!

I found this video titled, The Future Internet: Service Web 3.0 by semantictechnology, that not only talks about the increasingly interconnectedness of Web 3.0, but also what it could mean for our future.

The number of users and the amount of content being produced online is growing exponentially. Furthermore, each user has an increasing number of access points to the Internet including multiple computers, mobile phones, tablets, and more. Not only are we increasingly connected as both producers and consumers of content in the digital universe, but the devices that we use to connect to the Internet are also connected to each other.

Networked, hyper-personalized digital services will use the information from every action, location, and interaction that we make in increasingly subtle ways. These services will continuously learn about our patterns of behaviour, wants, needs, and actions, and make recommendations to us based on our behaviours. The future economy will be sustained through the connections that personalized smart systems have with each and every user.

This is where semantic technologies come in to make sense of the many ways in which we communicate digitally. Semantic technologies will de-code user-created content and actions and help other pieces of technology to use it in the creation of personalized recommendations. The everyday objects that we interact with will make up the “Internet of things,” where each object will play a part in monitoring what we do, where we go, and what we buy. Unified, networked services and processes on the Internet will help businesses reach consumers, markets, investors, and other businesses more efficiently and seamlessly.

The video predicts that the Internet will be pervasive in our lives, and offers that we will have to develop boundaries and limits to protect our personal information. This raises serious questions that already exist about personal privacy, as well as how much we should rely on such services in case they fail. I am also concerned about the hyper-personalization of services, information, and applications. I feel as though this will contribute even more to the isolation of people from each other when they become attached to only a handful of “realms” online, if you can call them that. However, the Internet of things may also help to organize like-minded individuals to connect and pursue positive endeavours.

I believe that educators will need to understand the nature of the connection between users and the technologies that we use. We will have to learn to think about the consequences and connections that are translated through our devices and everyday objects every time we interact with them. Our digital footprints will not only leave information about our preferences, actions, and wants, but will also influence future recommendations and in effect, our future decisions, are made. Communication, collaboration, and creation will be the most valued skills because it is the integration of information from multiple sources that will influence our decisions. We should be teaching our students to use the semantic web to combine multiple pieces of information in order to make well thought out decisions because if we don’t, someone or something else may do it for them…

What are your thoughts on this vision of Web 3.0? Please share!

Image: Design by connection, by Dave Gray. 2011. Used under a Creative Commons license.