The Web is over. Now comes the next big thing, growing out of the primordial soup of wireless and wired networks, gadgets, software, satellites and social changes created over the past decade.
This coming wave doesn't even have a name yet. Some in tech call it the world network. A big part of the promise is that it will turn the Web around: Instead of having to find information or entertainment, it will find you — and be exactly what you want or need at that moment. The network becomes a butler.
"This is the real Internet 2.0," says Halsey Minor, CEO of Grand Central Communications, a start-up helping catalyze the new era.
What will the world network do for people? One example, culled from interviews with executives and entrepreneurs across the tech industry, might be a service we'll call Travel Butler, or TB for short. It doesn't exist, but services like it are a gleam in the eye of companies ranging from Orbitz to AT&T.
Let's say it's 4 p.m. TB knows you have a flight scheduled for 6 p.m. because it regularly prowls the Web sites you use for travel and found you booked a ticket on Orbitz. TB can tell, perhaps by checking your online calendar, that you're at a meeting downtown.
The service cross-checks with a map service such as MapQuest to find the route you'd have to take to the airport. Once it knows that, TB goes out on the network to monitor traffic on your route — and finds the streams of data on the Department of Transportation Web site, which monitors road cameras and sensors.
TB might see that accidents have backed up traffic for miles. It sends you a message, which finds you on your BlackBerry e-mail, saying that to make your flight, you'd have to leave now. TB also shows you an Orbitz listing of later flights.
You decide to go on a later flight, so you click on the one you want. TB rebooks you, sends an e-mail to your spouse and contacts the car service in your destination city to change the time to pick you up.
That's an experience that rises above a particular technology. "People really don't want to buy technology," says Lisa Hook, head of America Online's broadband unit. "They do want to buy experiences."
"We're completing the revolution begun in the bubble economy," says Glover Ferguson, chief scientist for consulting giant Accenture. "The basis for this next really big thing has begun to be laid down." This is a point of transition as the World Wide Web gives way to the world network.
And neither did we. 
