Web 3.0: The Web Goes Industrial

May 7th, 2009 by Peter Sweeney (@petersweeney)

Web 2.0 is social: many hands make light work. In stark contrast, Web 3.0 is industrial: the automation of tasks displaces human work. But trite definitions won’t prepare us for change. Whatever you call it, our information economy is in the midst of an Industrial Revolution. And if you don’t place the Web within the frame of industrial manufacturing, you won’t see the real disruptive change coming.

This story reads much like the first Industrial Revolution. Artisans and skilled tradesman used to create everything by hand. Then, through the emergence of a handful of technical innovations, came the age of mass production. It was a profound turning point in human history, affecting every aspect of daily life.

Today, most content is still created by hand, the best of it by highly skilled artisans drawing on centuries of scholarship and experience. Recently, we’ve seen significant innovations in social approaches to content creation. But Web 3.0 industrialization takes content manufacturing to an entirely different level. Instead of users manually creating content, machines automate the heavy lifting. Consumers simply push the buttons and get stuff done. Think spinning wheels versus textile mills.

We’re in the midst of this Industrial Revolution right now. Billions are being spent worldwide on semantic technologies to create the factories and specialized machinery for manufacturing content. Railways of linked data and standards are being laid to allow these factories to trade and co-operate. And the most productive information services in the world are those that leverage Web 3.0 industrial processes and technologies.

Our company, Primal Fusion, is building one of these industrial Web 3.0 services. As an entrepreneur, I’ve ventured in Web 1.0, 2.0, and now 3.0. When I started in 1996, it took a team of highly skilled artisans many weeks to create a single website. Today, Primal Fusion enables individual consumers to build personal websites not in weeks or days, but in minutes, merely by brainstorming their interests. Accordingly, we’re measuring orders-of-magnitude productivity gains over Web 2.0 user-generated content models. (Note 1: Measurement)

This time, the Luddites among us won’t break the machines, but they will express skepticism about the quality of the content produced. Are machine-manufactured creations of a lower quality than those created by artisans? Of course, just like a mass-produced garment is of a lower quality than one that’s handcrafted. But who can afford handcrafted goods? The right question is whether consumers and producers can complete their tasks faster and cheaper than they can now. (Note 2: Examples)

And that’s the crux of this argument: The industrialization of content manufacturing is driven by the relentless pursuit of productivity advantages, not quality improvements. Once the industrial methods for manufacturing content reach a good-enough quality from the consumer’s perspective, the cost advantages will drive widespread adoption among consumers and producers alike.

This isn’t an apocalyptic vision, it’s just business. Productivity gains are steadily moving us towards consumer-directed, machine-powered content manufacturing. What many fail to realize is that Web 2.0 is far from the height of this model. In fact, it’s only the start. At what point will any consumer be able to push the buttons on the content-creation machines all by themselves? At what point will producers embrace industrial approaches and hand their customers the wheel?

So if not apocalyptic, this is certainly a disruptive transformation. Of course, highly skilled artisans are not going away, nor will their fine, handcrafted content. But demand will be affected, potentially marginalizing aspects of their services. However, this industrialization brings new opportunities, as well. Content professionals may choose to direct their skills to industrial methods, helping technologists design tools and developing innovative ways to include these tools in their services.

My colleague, Robert Barlow-Busch and I went to the Information Architecture Summit in Memphis last March to really dig into this topic. We presented an overview of how Web 3.0 technologies are disrupting the practice of information architecture (download slides, audio). There was also some excellent coverage of Web 3.0 topics by Chiara Fox from Adaptive Path and by Chris Thorne from the BBC.

So do people in the business of manufacturing content agree that we’re facing a fundamental change? Overall, I would say no. Many practitioners see Web 3.0 technologies as only tangentially relevant to what they do. They don’t view their work as manufacturing, at least not in an industrial sense, even as industrialists embrace these disciplines in the development of automated systems. (Note 3: Approaches)

But of course, if everyone saw this transformation coming, it wouldn’t be disruptive.

At the upcoming Web 3.0 Conference in New York, we’ll be keeping this discussion going. I’ll be participating in a panel alongside Eghosa Omoigui, Alex Iskold, and Greg Boutin, to discuss the state of Web 3.0 and Semantic Web technologies. If you’re in the area, I hope you can attend. And as always, please share your thoughts and ideas below.

Notes:

We’re measuring these productivity gains across a broad number of areas, including consumer participation rates in content creation, the amount of content created per contribution, customer value in terms of eCPM pricing for content created, and consumer value in terms of page views of content created.
A few examples of machine-synthetic approaches to content creation are listed below. Automated tasks include finding, selecting, describing, organizing, assembling, combining, and calculating content, all under the direction of consumers.
- Google News: A computer-generated news site where the articles are selected and ranked by computers.
- Kosmix: A “categorization engine” that organizes the Internet into magazine-style topic pages.
- Wolfram Alpha: A demonstration of a “knowledge computation engine” that dynamically calculates facts in response to questions.
- Primal Fusion: Example of a “thought networking” website created through a semantic synthesis technology.
There are many disparate fields that may intersect in the development of a Web 3.0 industrial system, including computer science, library and information science, cognitive science, interaction design, information architecture, and more.

Tags: disruptive innovations, IA Summit, industrial manufacturing, Industrial Revolution, information architecture, Primal Fusion, productivity, Semantic Web, Thought networking, user-generated content, Web 3.0, Web 3.0 Conference

8 Responses to “Web 3.0: The Web Goes Industrial”

Linda Avraamides Says:

May 9th, 2009 at 12:14 pm

I’ve always thought the print revolution was the analogy for the Web’s impact on culture and business, but the print revolution enabled the Industrial Revolution, so maybe there’s some validity in making this analogy. However, there are two aspects or assumptions about the IR in your comment that don’t sit well with me.

The first is what you mean by “content”. I come from a content management background and have seen how that concept has changed in my field these past few years and I’m not sure that people are using the term consistently. There’s a lack of ontological precision in the definition of this class right now and I can’t tell if you’re taking into consideration content formats such as video, images, audio, as well as text, or if you even mean something as granular as that or if “content” lies at the level of a web page, which for me, is an aggregation of content, a container. If the latter, I agree that traditional aggregators, such as newspapers, will be affected by Web 3.0, and already have been. If the former, I don’t know how Web 3.0 can create video or audio on the fly. Although the result could be quite interesting.

The second is your assertion that the IR made more things but of a lower quality, and people became happy with “good enough”. The first area to be industrialized was textile production, starting with spinning and weaving. Machine-spun thread was finer and stronger than hand-spun and made finer woven products at lower cost. Machine-woven cloth produced finer products in far greater quantity than hand-woven, which lowered the cost and enabled the middle-class to afford luxury fabrics like silk and cashmere, and the lower-class to afford finer and strong cottons and woolen fabrics. The IR actually increased the output of quality products, at least in textiles. What it changed was a business model that went from selling a few things at a high profit margin (the pre-Industrial boutique model), to selling many things at a low profit margin. In fact, entrepreneurs would actually sell certain items at a loss to get people into their stores and buy. Loss-leaders–sound familiar to open sourcers?

The Industrial Revolution didn’t just change the production model; it changed the business model and the concept of wealth, and who has access to it. The Information Revolution may also change the way we produce information, but it is also changing the business model and the concept of wealth. What they’re changing into no one knows yet, but what’s interesting is just how many people are in the conversation.

TreeMagic Says:

May 10th, 2009 at 9:20 am

You can see some of what is mentioned in the above article on http://wordpresshelp.org. We have been running this style of semantic extensions in a small demonstration for well over a year. Simply double click on any non-hyper-linked term and select the TreeMagic-Banyan Portal option to view a full example of the functionality.

An explanation of the approach may be found on the pages linked to: http://ambientwebs.com/web-30/

Chad Takahashi Says:

May 10th, 2009 at 2:03 pm

Great article. While the article claims Web 3.0 technologies (and Primal Fusion in particular) will increase consumers’ productivity, I got the sense that it also assumes the quality of the “machine-manufactured” content will definitely be lower than “hand rolled” content. Then I started wondering if this will necessarily be the case (i.e. how crazy is it to think that PF’s generated content might, on average, exhibit higher quality than content created by the “artisans”?).

This got me thinking about the notion of quality vs. elegance. The topic of this article reminds me of a similar (albeit on a much smaller scale) debate about GWT (Google’s Javascript compiler). GWT really shook up the Javascript community (and in particular the “Javascript Ninjas” — the artisans of the JS world). Many JS Ninjas were concerned that machine-generated Javascript code would be slow and bloated (read “lower quality”) compared to hand crafted JS, and that ultimately, it would decrease production of software. As it turns out, GWT typically produces Javascript code that is faster and smaller (and often more maintainable given the fact that it compiles cross-browser) than human-generated JS. Assuming code quality is measured by its speed, size (smallness), reliability, and ease of maintenance, GWT-generated code can be considered higher quality than the human-generated counterpart. I think the JS Ninjas were actually arguing that the machine-generated Javascript was not as elegant (i.e. clever and stylistically composed) as their own code — and I would tend to agree with this argument.

Similarly, while PF’s synthesized content may not necessarily exhibit the elegance of human crafted content (e.g. the ordering and layout of the content in a way that might be more intuitive/clever/entertaining), it might at some point exhibit higher quality (e.g. produce more novel and focused results).

-Chad-

Peter Sweeney Says:

May 18th, 2009 at 11:17 am

Thanks for the feedback.

@Linda, I’m speaking of content as both containers and nodes (chunks of content elements). Text is obviously more accessible than multimedia, but as the latter becomes semantically annotated, machine-document synthesis will extend into these areas as well. Machine mash-ups are already a reality.

@Linda, @Chad, good points about quality. I was speaking of machine-quality relative to human experts, not lay people. I agree that the quality of machine manufactured content could quickly surpass most lay people, technically if not artistically.

@TreeMagic, thanks for the links. I’ll check it out.

Sunil Malhotra Says:

July 1st, 2009 at 6:44 am

“And that’s the crux of this argument: The industrialization of content manufacturing is driven by the relentless pursuit of productivity advantages, not quality improvements.”

I do not want to detract from the main argument but sadly, this is the kind of thinking that brought about the current state of the world economy. We need to work towards a balance between quality and volume instead of one or the other. Mindless pusuit of efficiency leads to unheeded consumption and this erodes basic human values – caring for the environment, working within cultural sensitivities to name a couple.

Peter Sweeney Says:

July 1st, 2009 at 7:50 am

Sunil, thanks for the comment, and I agree with the broad point you’re making.

Sunil Malhotra Says:

July 2nd, 2009 at 5:09 am

Thank Peter!

I’ve been pondering a couple of points. Those thoughts that are akin to industrial output (commodity a.k.a concepts, ideas, keywords, tags) need structuring tools so that they can be ‘used’ in some ways, are IMO addressed beautifully by PrimalFusion. And I’m sure the concept will mature over time as an intelligent research assistant and publisher. No doubt about that. If we could add the value of thinking as a process – if smart algorithms could ‘guess where I’m coming from’ and help me articulate this (guess my thinking ’style’ and become better and better at doing so over time, much like speech recognition) … hey I like the sound of – “thought recognition”! – Primal Fusion would be a true world beater.

My two bit.

Primal Fusion: Ideas Blog » Blog Archive » Intelligent Designers and Evolutionists Battle for the Web Says:

December 21st, 2009 at 2:03 am

[...] professionals need to face the realities of Web 3.0 industrialization, just as they had to confront the social revolution of Web 2.0. While technological change is [...]

Linda Avraamides Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 12:14 pm

I’ve always thought the print revolution was the analogy for the Web’s impact on culture and business, but the print revolution enabled the Industrial Revolution, so maybe there’s some validity in making this analogy. However, there are two aspects or assumptions about the IR in your comment that don’t sit well with me.

The first is what you mean by “content”. I come from a content management background and have seen how that concept has changed in my field these past few years and I’m not sure that people are using the term consistently. There’s a lack of ontological precision in the definition of this class right now and I can’t tell if you’re taking into consideration content formats such as video, images, audio, as well as text, or if you even mean something as granular as that or if “content” lies at the level of a web page, which for me, is an aggregation of content, a container. If the latter, I agree that traditional aggregators, such as newspapers, will be affected by Web 3.0, and already have been. If the former, I don’t know how Web 3.0 can create video or audio on the fly. Although the result could be quite interesting.

The second is your assertion that the IR made more things but of a lower quality, and people became happy with “good enough”. The first area to be industrialized was textile production, starting with spinning and weaving. Machine-spun thread was finer and stronger than hand-spun and made finer woven products at lower cost. Machine-woven cloth produced finer products in far greater quantity than hand-woven, which lowered the cost and enabled the middle-class to afford luxury fabrics like silk and cashmere, and the lower-class to afford finer and strong cottons and woolen fabrics. The IR actually increased the output of quality products, at least in textiles. What it changed was a business model that went from selling a few things at a high profit margin (the pre-Industrial boutique model), to selling many things at a low profit margin. In fact, entrepreneurs would actually sell certain items at a loss to get people into their stores and buy. Loss-leaders–sound familiar to open sourcers?

The Industrial Revolution didn’t just change the production model; it changed the business model and the concept of wealth, and who has access to it. The Information Revolution may also change the way we produce information, but it is also changing the business model and the concept of wealth. What they’re changing into no one knows yet, but what’s interesting is just how many people are in the conversation.
TreeMagic Says:
May 10th, 2009 at 9:20 am

You can see some of what is mentioned in the above article on http://wordpresshelp.org. We have been running this style of semantic extensions in a small demonstration for well over a year. Simply double click on any non-hyper-linked term and select the TreeMagic-Banyan Portal option to view a full example of the functionality.

An explanation of the approach may be found on the pages linked to: http://ambientwebs.com/web-30/
Chad Takahashi Says:
May 10th, 2009 at 2:03 pm

Great article. While the article claims Web 3.0 technologies (and Primal Fusion in particular) will increase consumers’ productivity, I got the sense that it also assumes the quality of the “machine-manufactured” content will definitely be lower than “hand rolled” content. Then I started wondering if this will necessarily be the case (i.e. how crazy is it to think that PF’s generated content might, on average, exhibit higher quality than content created by the “artisans”?).

This got me thinking about the notion of quality vs. elegance. The topic of this article reminds me of a similar (albeit on a much smaller scale) debate about GWT (Google’s Javascript compiler). GWT really shook up the Javascript community (and in particular the “Javascript Ninjas” — the artisans of the JS world). Many JS Ninjas were concerned that machine-generated Javascript code would be slow and bloated (read “lower quality”) compared to hand crafted JS, and that ultimately, it would decrease production of software. As it turns out, GWT typically produces Javascript code that is faster and smaller (and often more maintainable given the fact that it compiles cross-browser) than human-generated JS. Assuming code quality is measured by its speed, size (smallness), reliability, and ease of maintenance, GWT-generated code can be considered higher quality than the human-generated counterpart. I think the JS Ninjas were actually arguing that the machine-generated Javascript was not as elegant (i.e. clever and stylistically composed) as their own code — and I would tend to agree with this argument.

Similarly, while PF’s synthesized content may not necessarily exhibit the elegance of human crafted content (e.g. the ordering and layout of the content in a way that might be more intuitive/clever/entertaining), it might at some point exhibit higher quality (e.g. produce more novel and focused results).

-Chad-
Peter Sweeney Says:
May 18th, 2009 at 11:17 am

Thanks for the feedback.

@Linda, I’m speaking of content as both containers and nodes (chunks of content elements). Text is obviously more accessible than multimedia, but as the latter becomes semantically annotated, machine-document synthesis will extend into these areas as well. Machine mash-ups are already a reality.

@Linda, @Chad, good points about quality. I was speaking of machine-quality relative to human experts, not lay people. I agree that the quality of machine manufactured content could quickly surpass most lay people, technically if not artistically.

@TreeMagic, thanks for the links. I’ll check it out.
Sunil Malhotra Says:
July 1st, 2009 at 6:44 am

“And that’s the crux of this argument: The industrialization of content manufacturing is driven by the relentless pursuit of productivity advantages, not quality improvements.”

I do not want to detract from the main argument but sadly, this is the kind of thinking that brought about the current state of the world economy. We need to work towards a balance between quality and volume instead of one or the other. Mindless pusuit of efficiency leads to unheeded consumption and this erodes basic human values – caring for the environment, working within cultural sensitivities to name a couple.
Peter Sweeney Says:
July 1st, 2009 at 7:50 am

Sunil, thanks for the comment, and I agree with the broad point you’re making.
Sunil Malhotra Says:
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:09 am

Thank Peter!

I’ve been pondering a couple of points. Those thoughts that are akin to industrial output (commodity a.k.a concepts, ideas, keywords, tags) need structuring tools so that they can be ‘used’ in some ways, are IMO addressed beautifully by PrimalFusion. And I’m sure the concept will mature over time as an intelligent research assistant and publisher. No doubt about that. If we could add the value of thinking as a process – if smart algorithms could ‘guess where I’m coming from’ and help me articulate this (guess my thinking ’style’ and become better and better at doing so over time, much like speech recognition) … hey I like the sound of – “thought recognition”! – Primal Fusion would be a true world beater.

My two bit.
Primal Fusion: Ideas Blog » Blog Archive » Intelligent Designers and Evolutionists Battle for the Web Says:
December 21st, 2009 at 2:03 am

[...] professionals need to face the realities of Web 3.0 industrialization, just as they had to confront the social revolution of Web 2.0. While technological change is [...]

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Web 3.0: The Web Goes Industrial

May 7th, 2009 by Peter Sweeney (@petersweeney)

8 Responses to “Web 3.0: The Web Goes Industrial”

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