Anyone who was anybody in the Internet business descended on the San Francisco Web 2.0 summit recently, which featured speakers such as Jay Adleson of Digg.com, Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft chief executive, MySpace co-founder Chris De Wolf, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., and many other brains behind high profile websites and properties on the Internet. But then at $3,500 for a ticket you’d expect nothing less.

 One of the topics of heated discussion to come out of the seminar was the ‘web’s edge’, what lay beyond web 2.0 and how will the semantic web or ‘web 3.0’ link all the Internet’s data in an intelligent fashion?

A new type of Internet is being imagined in Silicon Valley, far beyond what we are experiencing today.

 If web 1.0 was the first decade of the web, establishing the Internet platform and dealing with back end issues such as its’ navigational structure and making information as widely available as possible, then web 2.0, the current decade is all about usability, people connecting and front-end focus. YouTube, Facebook and other ‘web 2.0’ properties will be but a pixel drop in the Proverbial ocean through the lens of those anticipating the next evolution.

 In little over a decade, it has been predicted by the engineers of tomorrow’s internet, that the web will interweave every aspect of our digital lives, web, email, mobile, knowing the subject of the email you are writing whilst suggesting books, videos and documents that may be relevant to that topic. A smart Internet is waiting…

 Companies such as Powerset, which is developing natural-language technology nicknamed ‘Google killer’ as their search engine technology takes it all to a higher level. This web 3.0 technology refers to the ability of search engines to answer full questions such as 'Which Hollywood actors died of a disease?' The web would know that, for instance, Rock Hudson was an actor and AIDS was a disease.

 Another example would be asking for specific information such as, ‘I want to go on holiday to the Maldives with my wife and two children, eat good seafood and not pay more than $3000.’ At which point the results would list a series of packages suitable that reflect the users’ needs as opposed to a list of travel agents.

 The engineers are dreaming and typing by their flickering screens, so watch this space.