Remember when web 2.0 was the innovative new topic of conversation for everyone and their cubs? Facebook, Twitter, Digg completely changed the way many people interface with the internet. People of all ages, nationalities and socio-economic status have embraced this phenomenon of web 2.0 as their own. Really, it has become their own, and that seems to be the way the internet is evolving—towards fast, simple, useful, and customizable applications that shrink the line between the worldwide web and the tangible world.

Feeding regular, pertinent, user-generated content to a gargantuan audience is web 2.0’s crowning achievement. When someone needs to spread information these days, they don’t write a stack of letters, they accomplish the same thing by making a simple status update that is visible to all their friends and colleagues. Done. With web 2.0, the internet transformed from a repository of information that was generally only read, to an interactive and personal experience. If web 2.0 was the personalizing revolution of the internet, web 3.0 is going to be the revolution of smart internet technology.

What does it mean that web 3.0 will be the revolution of smart internet technology? The internet continuously gathers information about more and more things as time goes on. Normally, that information would be actively found through search engines and implemented by human operators in order to achieve a singular goal. Now it’s not just people communicating through the internet; home appliances, video game consoles, and the houses they reside in are beginning to communicate regularly with the internet.

As more appliances begin to upload and download information from the internet, the stock of information on the web grows large enough to provide detailed usage statistics to web 3.0. The general consensus is that web 3.0 will compile this tsunami of information and feed it to new technologies designed to streamline end users’ experiences. For an example of what web 3.0 might look like, look at Pandora, a music streaming service that collects detailed statistics about all its users’ musical preferences, then uses the mass of information it gleaned from its community to predict what music might be most appealing to each user.

Now imagine that same concept being applied to anything and everything else around you.

If the internet continues to evolve in this direction, web 3.0 will follow you everywhere. You won’t have to be sitting at a desk or carrying a laptop with you in order to participate. Your computer will be in your phone, your car, probably even your shoes. In fact, computers are already in phones, cars, and shoes. The fascinating part is going to be watching them begin sharing and cross-indexing all the information they already produce.