Predicting what the World Wide Web, and the Internet in general, will do next has almost become an exercise in irresistible futility for many IT experts, a prognosticative allure that keeps people perpetually guessing as to the online world’s next potential iteration. Throughout its relatively short, yet fascinating and sometimes turbulent development, the Web has gone from an almost geeky distraction to a worldwide economic necessity.
When the Internet—at least as it applied to the Web—really started to take hold in the early 1990s, for example, it largely consisted of static pages that presented information but offered little interactivity. Individuals and other investors nevertheless banked heavily on this early model, eventually prompting the dotcom boom and subsequent bust at the turn of the Millennium.
The World Wide Web, however, has proven to be the proverbial Phoenix rising from its own perceived ashes. As huge amounts of data storage have become less expensive and pervasive, the Web has been able to deliver more multimedia components, as well as better catering to the explosive growth of online retail and financial transactions. Additionally, interactive forums such as newsgroups and chat rooms have morphed and become components of traditional Web pages (in the form of comment engines, online community forums and even entire virtual worlds, such as Second Life), prompting what many in the IT marketing world are referring to as “Web 2.0,” or the next generation of collaborative and interactive Web surfing.