bladam -- the blatherings of Adam Lasnik

Okay, I admit it.  I missed the boat and jealously hollered that naming anything Web 2.0 is a bunch of crap.  So more recently I thought, hey, that’s no problem, I’ll just glom onto Web 3.0, the semantic Web.  I mean, look, I have lots of nice Jewish programmer friends, so who am I to be anti-semantic?!

But dammit, then I discovered that Nicholas Carr has already laid claim to Web 3.0!  The bastard!

Never fear, dear BLADAM readers… I have the solution!  I am hereby claiming as my own Web 4.0… with t-shirts and stickers, special edges, an expensive conference, and a network of blogs.

Yes, yes, I hear your skepticism already:  So, Adam-you-total-killjoy-smartass, pray tell us… what exactly is Web 4.0?  Well, I thought you’d never ask!  Allow me to explain this scintillating new Web with crystal clarity.

Web 4.0 involves two-way individually-aggregated communal infocommerce predicated upon the six human senses!  Sure, smell-o-vision may have crashed and burned, fine, maybe that tactile mouse thing never took off… but all of it combined?  And tied to the Web?  Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be big.

SMELL the Web.  FEEL the Web.  TASTE the Web (actually, this part includes just LICK until 4.1, but that’s a mere troublesome tribble).  Imagine a wackypedia entry with which you can SMELL Detroit!  Imagine your favorite mapping service applied tactilely to 

Pamela Anderson’s cleavage

 academically enlightening geodesic dome models… collaboratively, in real time!

But I’m not stopping there.  I’m also trademarking the following:
- Television 4.0 (2.0 clicked with the remote)
- Medicine 4.0 (Viagra lifted it up to 2.0)
- Philosophy 4.0 (Exiting the cave was 2.0)
- Air travel 4.0 (Southwest is 2.0!)
- The Law 4.0 (The McDonald’s Coffee heated things up to 2.0)

and

...wait a minute? What’s that you say?  We never really did refer to any of these things as 2.0?  No one has ever blathered on about whether Jet Blue qualifies as part of Air travel 2.0?  Or whether a doctor is adhering to Medicine 2.0 principles? (maybe if he has—snort—well-rounded edges and listens to his patients?).  Hmm… how about “My new Sony is so Television 2.0!”  No?  It just sounds silly and goofily arbitrary?

No matter!  If my 4.0 schwag is really hip and if I can get enough bloggers to BlogOn!(tm), we can make this a true movement with all 0.0000037% of the world’s citizens who are also nomenclature-obsessed-geeks.  Our numbers may be small, but we’re powerful… just look at our Alexa graph, babeeee!  You dare compete with that? ;-)