…I hope that we as humanity can learn to use this information space to understand each other, that we can form ourselves into groups in lots of interesting ways so that between us that sort of just tangled web of human groups spans the world and makes that so that it's not…you aren't too many clicks across the social Web from any one person to any other one person, so that start really pulling together in the world and solving the huge challenges which we've got without being distracted by fighting each other. — Sir Tim Berners Lee
…software mashups al la Web 2.0 technologies have gained traction — Grady Booch
Wow! The more I read about this, the more I begin to imagine what life would be were it not for the World Wide Web. It's become so easy to talk to some person who you have not even seen. Specially social networking has reached a stage where it's been more important to 'know people who know' rather than just 'know'! (Can you imagine life without Orkut?!)
If you want to have a larger picture of the way the WWW is positioned now and about its history and the way you can expect it to proceed, you need to listen to this podcast or read it here. (Source: From IBM developerworks article)
As for Booch's comment, well, if Booch says it, you better watch that space! (Here's the source for Grady Booch's comment.)