I agree that if systems are generating smart content for the context in your augmented reality examples, that *is* semantic web. I’m not sure I think the tablet version of content really is web 3.0, since it’s still designed by the publisher and isn’t really (at least to me) new. And I think augmented reality goggles for mechanics is really cool, but still not web 3.0.

Still, I see where you’re coming from and I can see why you might want to consider some of this as web 3.0. I’ll have to ponder further. I do think mobile is a more fundamental change than I did a few years ago, and I look forward to reading your take. Thanks again for taking the time to respond and help me and readers understand how you made the distinctions that emerged in the report.

As one of the authors of the report, I wanted to chime on this. Please get the full report if you can so you can see how the analysis was conducted. The executive summary just couldn’t do justice to the in-depth findings. One of the first things we did in this research was ask learning professionals and other experts how THEY defined Web 3.0. We started with a focus group and then, based input from that group, surveyed a large number of learning and HR professionals about the extent to which they consider various items as belonging to the Web 3.0 paradigm.

I don’t want to make this response too long so I’ll ignore 3-D aspects of Web 3.0, only citing experts such as Dr. Tony O’Driscoll and his idea of the “immernet” as one of the reasons we polled learning professionals about whether this fits into the Web 3.0 paradigm. Instead, let’s focus on the mobile Web, which I think was one of the most interesting and, as you suggest, controversial findings of the report.

It turned out that the mobile Web was the area which the largest percentage of respondents identified as part of Web 3.0. This surprised some of the people on research team, including myself, but the data are clear on this point. I’m accustomed to thinking about Web 3.0 in terms of semantic Web, etc., but this isn’t about what you or I think. It’s about what the practitioners believe. Can we really call them “right” or “wrong” in regard to a term such as Web 3.0, which is fast evolving and about which even the experts disagree?

As we explored these findings, we discovered that the participants probably have made a good “collective-wisdom” point in regard to mobile tech. Mobile technologies are, in fact, quickly changing the way people approach the Web. You write, “Yes, you can access produced content, and user-generated content from wherever/whenever, but it’s not going to change the content you see in any meaningful way.”

There are three responses to this. First, augmented reality apps, for example, are mainly restricted to mobile devices and help people learn information on the fly. These will grow increasingly powerful and useful over the next year or two. Another aspect of the mobile Web is the use of services such as Foursquare, which also helps people socialize and learn about one another in ways that conventional PC or laptop apps were never able to do.

The second (and probably more arguable) part of my response is that the “wherever/whenever” aspect of the mobile is, in fact, a paradigm change all on its own. Web content is just starting to change as a result. We’re seeing the creation of new kinds of books and magazines online that are not, in the conventional sense, books or magazines at all. They’re something quite different, something for which we don’t even have a good name yet, something that is rapidly evolving in a new Cambrian explosion on the mobile Web. Can you see these new apps on your laptop? Maybe. But we wouldn’t have created them at all in a PC world.

Finally, as we note in the report, mobile technologies are already expanding beyond smart phones and tablets, with companies such as BMW presenting ideas such as augmented reality goggles as the next way they’ll be extending the productivity of their mechanics and engineers.

So, although I myself wouldn’t have viewed mobile technologies as a key part of Web 3.0 before we conducted the research, I now believe there’s a strong argument to be made that it is. Viva la revolucion.

If you’d like to read more about my take on mobile tech, please go to http://markrvickers.com/2011/02/15/is-mobile-tech-going-to-transform-learning/