Can WWW be Successful?

Considering the fact that the number of WWW servers and users keeps exploding the title of this paper sounds strange, to say the least. However, while every organisation without their own proper URL starts to feel like an outcast, there are clouds over the future of the WWW. After all, the number of "broken links'' keeps rising every month, not just in absolute numbers but also percentage-wise. Estimates have it that by the year 2000 almost 10 % of all links will be broken, i.e. will (when clicked at) produce the infamous message "Error 404. Object not found''. The situation is not restricted to the Internet, but applies as well to WWW based Intranet solutions. A well-known Fortune 100 company, when systematically checking their Intranet, found 4000 links that were not working. The overall situation is worse: search engines are unable to cope with the chaos on the web, returning too many hits, documents found are obsolete, secure payment procedures are still a rarity, and so is making money with what one offers on the WWW, etc. Thus, it is no wonder that insiders are starting to ask the question: will WWW be able to evolve into a truly usable environment, or will it be necessary to "start all over again'', with an entirely new "Web2'', or whatever you might call it. After all, such things have happened before: the amateur film has not evolved to but has been replaced by video; musical records of once have been replaced by CD's; and Videotex, even the fairly wide-spread Minitel of France, was wiped out by WWW. Are we going to witness another revolution? Or is there a reasonable migration-path to what we surely need: a Web2? Some of the main weaknesses of ordinary WWW will be discussed in this paper. It will also be argued that having WWW interfaces on top of traditional databases does not solve the problem. Rather, a more integrated approach of four competing paradigms is necessary to solve the problems we encounter today. Solutions of this type are starting to be used in a growing number of large Intranets, making it possible that they will "spill over" into the Internet. For the majority of users unnoticeable, this may well mean the replacement of the WWW as we now see it by more modern solutions, by a Web2.