“Web 3.0,” by Stephen DeAngelis,” Enterprise Resilience Management Blog, 14 November 2006, http://enterpriseresilienceblog.typepad.com/enterprise_resilience_man/2006/11/web_30.html (from Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog).

“The Age of Resilience,” by Brian Mockenhapt, Esquire, December 2006, http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2006/061105_mfe_December_06_Global_Resilience_1.html (hat-tip to Bradd Hayes).

This fall, Enterra teamed up with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a Department of Energy site outside Knoxville, Tennessee, to form the Institute for Advanced Technologies in Global Resilience. America, the institute reasons, will protect itself best not by throwing up firewalls and digging moats but by becoming more connected, hyperconnected. The tighter and more far-reaching the network, the stronger its ability to absorb a vertical hit—like September 11, Hurrricane Katrina, or an outbreak of avian flu—and minimize the ripples spreading across the country. The more resilient we become, the faster we respond and the faster we recover.

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Squirreled away in an office building a half hour outside Philadelphia, Enterra’s small staff of tech whizzes and programmers is breathing life into Resilience Net. They huddle around computers writing language that translates regulations, laws, and accepted business practices into automated rule sets—if A and B, then C. These rules, which might tell a business how to order new parts or com¬ply with the Patriot Act, are amassed in virtual libraries as algorithms. The system can think and react, much the way your antivirus software detects a threat, sends in a report, and brings back a patch to fix the problem while it inoculates other systems. The rules decide what information needs to be analyzed and shared, then how to disseminate it to the right people. If a law changes, new rules are added to the library and the system updates and learns. Now the organization can act with minimal human involvement, and as new sensors, databases, or analysis techniques are developed, the overall network grows in strength. With different groups using the same rules library, translating information into code everyone can understand, communication is streamlined. This is how you connect the dots.

I’ve written about Enterra’s software services before. Enterra deserves credit for helping to turn resilience into a science. It also ties nicely into the Semantic Web, which Enterra CEO DeAngelis calls “Web 3.0″

In other words, Web 3.0, sometimes called the semantic Web, intends on taking advantage of grid computing (or what IBM is trying to market as “utility computing”) to make surfing a faster and more valuable experience. It is called the semantic Web because it will be able to understand more fully what it is that a surfer is looking for

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Markoff is quick to point out that Web 3.0 remains a dream and that there are significant technical difficulties to overcome. At Enterra Solutions, we are aware of both the promise and the challenges associated with the semantic Web. On the Web, however:

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The databases that Spivack’s company uses store relationships rather than data. Markoff writes about a University of Washington project that uses a semantic database to rate hotels. The system can “understand” concepts like room temperature, bed comfort, cleanliness, etc. as well as ratings such as great, good, okay, etc.

The Semantic Web, or “Web 3.0″ essentially amounts to normalizing substantial parts of the web to make it more machine-friendly. Unlike Web 2.0 which seems to focus on human-usability improvements, using technology as part of the background, Web 3.0 would bring technology to the forefront. People matter more.

Ultimately, I think Web 3.0 is a good, but misguided, idea. People are more important than machines, . The same underlying technologies that are building Web 2.0 — such as AJAX Javascript Web Services — will eventually realize most of the dream of Semantic Web enthusiasts. “Semantic Paths,” which would be required in a Semantic Web, can doubtless be built to handle certain specific, inflexible tasks. You can build a good business out of it, as DeAngelis is demonstrating. But (as I’m sure DeAngelis would agree) it is not the be-all end-al of the web, or even a major user-centered improvement such as Web.20 or a major technological event such as the open sourcing of the Java compiler.

Update: Shawn in Tokyo and Tom Barnett have more.