The paper develops some of the conclusions, reached in Floridi (2007), concerning the future developments of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and their impact on our lives. The two main theses supported in that article were that, as the information society develops, the threshold between online and offline is becoming increasingly blurred, and that, once there won’t be any significant difference, we shall gradually re-conceptualise ourselves not as cyborgs but rather as inforgs, i.e. socially connected, informational organisms. In this paper, I look at the development of the so-called Semantic Web and Web 2.0 from this perspective and try to forecast their future.

Regarding the Semantic Web, I argue that it is a clear and well-defined project, which, despite some authoritative views to the contrary, is not a promising reality and will probably fail in the same way AI has failed in the past. Regarding Web 2.0, I argue that, although it is a rather ill-defined project, which lacks a clear explanation of its nature and scope, it does have the potentiality of becoming a success (and indeed it is already, as part of the new phenomenon of Cloud Computing) because it leverages the only semantic engines available so far in nature, us. I conclude by suggesting what other changes might be expected in the future of our digital environment.

What is the next stage in the development of the Web? At least since the dot-com mess, the question has kept pundits and techno-fans on their toes. The recent reshaping of the industry, with the blog-sphere coming to maturity (The Economist, 2008) has only increased the pressure. Recently, two distinct answers have gradually emerged from the rather vociferous and noisy market of ideas: one, unmistakeably Berners-Lee’s, advocates the Semantic Web, the other, easily recognisable as O’Reilly’s, supports the so-called Web 2.0. As usual, philosophers have been rather quiet on the issue, but it is time to break the silence and take sides. This is what I intend to do in this paper.

In the following pages, I will defend a fairly simple thesis. Semantic Web applications are either exciting science fiction (when “semantic” in Semantic Web is taken seriously) or realistic trivialities (what I shall call the MetaSyntactic Web), whereas it is unclear what Web 2.0 applications really amount to, but they do capture an actual novelty in the current development of online technologies, for they take full advantage of the semantic and collaborative capacities of human users in order to improve and expand the infosphere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infosphere). More specifically, in section two, I will argue that the Semantic Web is a clear and well-defined project, which is most definitely not a promising reality, despite some authoritative views to the contrary (e.g., Berners-Lee and Fischetti 1999). I will highlight some of its main problems in section three and argue that the Semantic Web, if taken seriously, will fail in the same way as AI has failed in the past. In section four, I will argue that Web 2.0 (O’Reilly 2006) is a rather ill-defined idea, lacking a clear explanation of its nature and scope. However, I will also argue that current critics, such as Berners-Lee (Anderson 2006), may be compared to detractors of non-AI solutions to problems once interpreted as AI-solvable, such as John McCarthy (1997), who was disappointed by Deep Blue and its ability to win against Kasparov, despite having the intelligence of a toaster. In section five, I will defend the view that, precisely because the Web 2.0 is not the Semantic Web, this is one reason why it is succeeding. For, once the ontological nature of Web 2.0 is made explicit and precise, it can be shown to be a very promising reality, which best captures the future development of current ICTs, since it leverages the only semantic engines available so far in the universe, us, and our social capacities to collaborate cumulatively. In section six, I will comment on how the philosophy of information may help us to understand current technological developments in the information society. I will conclude by briefly commenting on the process of defragmentation of the infosphere in section seven.

2. What is the Semantic Web?
The idea of a Semantic Web was introduced by Tim Berners-Lee in the nineties. A decade or so later, it has become hard to disentangle a simple and clear definition of the Semantic Web, also known as Web 3.0, from a barrage of unrealistic and inflated hype or just unreliable and shameless advertisements. I hope the reader will not mind if I provide a longish selection of quotes. They are necessary in order to illustrate how inflated the idea of a Semantic Web really is, verbatim. The following passages are all from Berners-Lee et al.

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