NP: John Cage, 4'33"

Interesting little bit on a new website that offers bite-size versions of long-form journalism, but aside from the primary subject of the article, I was struck by this passage:

The Web is moving toward the combination of human reviewers with Internet search. WebMD founder Jeff Arnold has said that if the latest evolution of the Internet, Web 2.0, was about the consumer -- meaning user-generated sites such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube -- then Web 3.0 will be about the editor.

This resonates really strongly with me. I remember being at South By Southwest years and years and years ago, and while there was a lot of talk about how the Internet "leveled the playing field" between the major labels and anyone with a guitar and a laptop, there was already, at that point, a sense that there needed to be filters to get through the huge amounts of crap in such a level field. I think Chris Anderson of Long Tail fame has opined on this as well.

As for whether that's the gist of Web 3.0, that remains to be seen. But it seems entirely possible that navigating the glut of content has got to happen sooner or later.