Having trouble keeping up with what version of the Web we’re in right now?  Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Semantic Web, Implicit Web, Charlotte’s Web…?

As I was exercising tonight, I was contemplating our tendency to break history into neat and tidy eras.  For some reason, I recalled a very vivid memory of sitting in an upper level German art & culture class during my undergraduate days.  We went systematically through the various eras of Western art history with odd-named eras like Medieval, Renaissance, Classical, Gothic, Baroque, and Rococo.  

Once we finished going through this well defined time line, we delved into notable composers, painters, and patrons.  The only problem was that the individuals we studied for each period didn’t live in sequential order.  They blended together with eras blurring into their neighbors without have specific dates that one ended and the other began.

Yesterday, I was reading through a section of Always On: Advertising, Marketing, and Media in an Era of Consumer Control.  It’s a great book that nails the fundamental shifts happening all around us.  However, when I came to a part that delineated the different generations, it touched a deep nerve within my psyche.

Since I just celebrated reaching the constitutional milestone of being able to run for the President of the United States, I fall into Generation X or “slackers”.  I remember when I was in high school and college hearing that my generation would be the first generation of Americans who would be worse off than their parents.  Plus, my generation was adrift and destined to amount to nothing.  That’s always bothered me and that irritation erupted again as I read this section in Always On.  

Today, my dad celebrates his 62nd birthday (Happy Birthday, Pops), which puts him in the Baby Boomer generation.  It so happens that my son turned 7 years old last month, putting him in Generation Z.  

[Sidebar: Who's the original thinker behind that name?  What's next - Generation AA?  But, I digress...]  

So does that mean my dad, me, and my son fall into the neat and tidy demographic table?  Absolutely not.  Sure, we have shared experiences with our contemporaries, but in many regards we are more similar to people in other generations.  

The same concept is true for today’s internet.  While some new web applications and websites share characteristics and traits, they aren’t all cut from the stock.  

Without a doubt, we’re witnessing a trend toward more social media with user-generated content and intense conversational interactions.  We’re also tagging the content that we are producing, thereby creating implicit links with all types of other content not normally placed in proximity of the neat and tidy categories.  Already, we’re seeing applications that bring relevant items to our attention that might otherwise been missed.

I imagine the confusion of the various names will continue to exist.  But, I think that’s more due to what historian’s know to be true: the worst people to write history are those currently living it.  Only when time separates us from events, can we discern historical facts and patterns.  Let the historians decide what to properly call it, let’s stick to living it.

In the meantime, I had a thought.  Do you think Mozart would hoist some glasses of red wine around with his composing buddies and throw around his own labels on the music?  ”Yeah, Symphony #40 was good and all, but that was so Music 1.0, don’t you think?  Put in more flourishes and a trumpet solo…now we’re really jamming with some hi-fidelity Music 2.0.”