Adding up the virtual miles

I wish my computer had an odometer. Then I would know for certain how many virtual miles I've travelled around the Internet. I do know, though, that I've logged more virtual windshield time and seen more virtual landscapes these past few months than I have in the last few years combined.

When I go on a physical trip, I use my camera to snap photos along the way so I can remember where I've been and what I saw. In doing research on the web, I need something like a camera too. Too often I find an outstanding website or blog and think, "Oh, I'll remember where I found that" and later search high and low for it without success.

When the web was still a toddler, my list of favorite websites fit on a sticky note. Then I graduated to using bookmarks in a web browser, and then to organizing bookmarks into folders. Now those URL collection spots have expanded to include a wiki and blog, Google Reader and iGoogle, which may further evolve into a Personal Learning Network. I wonder, though, as I do more research on the web, if I should use some tools like Diigo, iCyte, Zotero or Evernote. Does anybody have a recommendation?

Just as my own URL lists have grown exponentially over time, so too has the amount of information on the Internet. In spite of powerful search engines and carefully selected search terms, it's still a shot in the dark sometimes to find exactly what I'm looking for. Just as the world's information has outgrown the card catalog, is it now outgrowing the capabilities of the search engines as we know them?

That's the premise of this fascinating video by Kate Ray, which gives us a peek at what may be the next generation of information exchange: Web 3.0, a.k.a. Semantic Web. The Semantic Web will look at relationships between pieces of information and use those relationships to build context. Since context gives meaning, the result might be among other things more intelligent search results.

It sounds quite esoteric to me, but the idea is intriguing. And the sound effect at the end of the video made me wonder if, in a few short years, we'll look back at the Internet as it is today and remark about how unintelligent it was.