Two dot oh

I am getting a bit tired of reading all this stuff about Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and the like. Seems as if you could take any term, add some versioning number greater than two and then you have a new buzzword that you can explain anyway you like.

But this blog is not here to just rant along, so I try to be a bit more precise. The versioning number 2.0 seems to indicate some level of user participation so operators of backend systems (such as a CRM module) get regular feedback from end users as a by-product from user interaction. If you find 3.0 as a suffix, this seems to indicate that the collected data from user interactions are not only grouped and associated to specific instances (such as database objects and processes), but that the relation between the user interactions is also exploited semantically to deduce semantics, meaning and, in the long run, user intentions.

When you read the press, all kinds of neat scenarios are described, but we almost never read how much modelling effort is needed. On the other hand, while being placed on hold after having specified what type of service I could possibly want via an automated agent, I ask myself if I would not prefer to talk to a human instead of a machine. Why do I need to tell the agent that my phone connection is broken if it is possible to check that automatically? Why do I need to spend a minute or more interacting with a machine if waiting intervals are not reduced?