Predicting the future of technology is a hazardous thing. Bill Gates once wrote, “What I’ve said that turned out to be right will be considered obvious, and what was wrong will be humorous.”

No doubt he was thinking about an infamous quote about computer memory attributed to him that went “640KB should be enough for everyone.” Although he has since denied ever saying this, I’m afraid he’ll never live that one down. Still, there are those who continue to voice their opinions on upcoming trends. Here are some of the things predicted to happen for Web 3.0.

Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix: “Web 1.0 was dial-up, 50K average bandwidth, Web 2.0 is an average 1 megabit of bandwidth and Web 3.0 will be 10 megabits of bandwidth all the time, which will be the full video Web, and that will feel like Web 3.0.”

Although the increase in bandwidth, along with lower costs, certainly helped spur growth on the Internet, his definition would mean that certain parts of the world are still stuck at Web 1.0, while Japan is already on Web 3.0 or even 4.0 - but isn’t there only one World Wide Web?

Eric Schmidt, a Google stalwart, once said, “If I were to guess what Web 3.0 is, I would tell you that it’s a different way of building applications… My prediction would be that Web 3.0 will ultimately be seen as applications which are pieced together. There are a number of characteristics: the applications are relatively small, the data is in the cloud, the applications can run on any device, PC or mobile phone, the applications are very fast and they’re very customizable. Furthermore, the applications are distributed virally: literally by social networks, by email. You won’t go to the store and purchase them… That’s a very different application model than we’ve ever seen in computing.”

While interesting, Tim O’Reilly already defined Web 2.0 as “web as a platform” for applications, so to me, at least, it feels like an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary change.

For his part, Tim Berners-Lee, thinks of the Semantic Web as the future - machines will be able to understand data and give meaningful responses. In an article in Scientific American, he said it’s “not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.”

It’s a promising concept, but it’s also an ambitious project with lots of challenges. There are already several projects geared towards this, so it’s likely to happen. The questions is, will it see enough traction in the mainstream for it to be considered a success?