Yesterday, Tim Bray posted an entry about his dislike for the term "Web 2.0", arguing that the growing impact of blogging and syndication on the way the web works is "3.0", not "2.0" (and hints that it may even be "4.0"). Tim O'Reilly, whose organization has a conference named the "Web 2.0 Conference" posted today acknowledging that we probably are really in "3.0" or even "8.0", but defending the name on the basis that it has caught on and the meaning of it is quickly understandable...at least in some abstract sense. So is it 2.0, 3.0 or 8.0? For the answer, we have to look to Einstein--it's all relative to one's frame of reference.

An analogy: for someone born in the 60's, classical music is Music 1.0, big band is Music 2.0, 60's is 3.0, 70's is 4.0, 80's is 5.0, and so on. But for someone born in the 90's, 80's music probably 3.0. Unless they've studied music history, in which case you need to add in cavemen beating on logs, chant, a bunch of divisions within classical, etc. Similarly, someone who's first internet experience was on the VAX, it's not even a question of what Web version is emerging, but whether this is Internet 5.0, 6.0, etc. For someone who's internet experience can be summed up with the letters "A-O-L", heck, it's probably still 1.0, or even 0.5. For me, chat on the VAX at college was Internet 1.0. CompuServe was Internet 2.0, AOL was Internet 3.0 (which some OEM sold as Web 1.0), having my own colocated server was 4.0/2.0, and syndication is 5.0/3.0.

...unless I've left a version out. I don't even know what my own version number is. How could I possibly choose a number for anyone else?