In the world according to Nick Carr, "Web 2.0 is so over" - an opinion cemented by the fact many people who attended the recent Web 2.0 Summit came away less than wowed. While Carr could be right - or he's found another Web issue to be curmudgeon-ly about - it would be presumptuous to use the Web 2.0 Summit has the litmus test for the Web 2.0 landscape. Why not? For one, the conference cost $3,000 so it meant the people attending were most the upper-crust of the Web world, who have already heard and seen it all. In other words, all those hot-shot speakers that a conference organizer can only dream about recruiting were simply preaching to the converted. This explains why GigaOm's Liz Gannes dismissed the Web 2.0 Summit as "not the place to be" if you were looking to learning something new. That's a pithy statement for someone living, working and operating in Silicon Valley but there are lots of people who still have to learn there is life on the Web beyond e-mail and e-commerce. Fortunately, the New York Times has come to the rescue of the restless Web elite by trumpeting the  emergence of Web 3.0, which is described as the intelligent Web as opposed to the interactive Web. A couple points: one, who's going to trademark"Web 3.0", and two, will Web 3.0 excite the "cool kids' such as Liz Gannes and Richard MacManus about the Web again? I've been writing about and using the Internet since 1995, and the pace of change and exciting new developments has never ceased to amaze me. As a mainstream tool, the Web is still in its infancy and there's plenty of experimentation still happening as people grapple with how to use it. Everything is cyclical, including the Web's development, so the restlessness about the Web elite will probably disappear soon when the next, new big thing emerges on the scene. Tags: , ,