Web 3.0, at your service

Remember Clippy, Microsoft's 'helpful' Office Assistant? The annoying little brat of a computer programme, who became the butt of many of our most sophisticated Microsoft Mickey-taking jokes?

Well imagine a far less annoying, but not so cute Clippy for all aspects of your 'connected' life - encompassing documents, programmes, uploads, downloads, and spanning all mediums of text, picture and video.

Writing a word document on Art History? How about an Internet that recognises not just what you're writing, or how you're writing it, but suggests web links for research material on that topic, points you to pictures and videos on your subject of choice, or connects you by Skype to friends of friends who might know more about it?

Welcome to Web 3.0.

Many have waxed lyrical on what the new generation of web will throw up - by definition, its largely unknowable until it actually happens. For some, the transition can appear at first, seamless.

Do you remember the exact point you first thought 'my goodness, this web 2.0 is fantastically more advanced than 1.0'? No, neither do I. I was far too busy being concerned with the fact I still was neither as slim nor successful as I wanted to be when the unwelcome spontaneous school reunion burst onto my computer screen via the wonder of Facebook in 2005.

But the next transition might be a bit more exciting. This time we know what we want the web to do, we're just waiting for technology to catch up.

In a nut shell, the web is becoming 'intelligent'. No, it won't be able to crawl out of your dormant monitor and tidy the living room while you sleep. But it will know who you are, where you are, what you're doing, what you're interested in, and how you like to 'do it'.

To some, this new generation of web connection and communication will be welcome on a par with burning in hell with nothing but a pair of knickers on. For those of you who are just about taming the reins of the inter-connective community of Web 2.0 - avoiding the Facebook revolution with the shadow of a notion that some bespectacled, spotty, twenty something in America will 'steal their identity' - Web 3.0 is probably not going to be your tea of choice.

But for those of us who've enjoyed the laziness the Internet so far has allowed us, this new A.I will open doors to us that our forefathers could never even have imagined possible.

Looking forward to it? With nervous trepidation, I hope very much to be on the front line. Knickers and everything.