Jason Calacanis' recent post on web 3.0 caused quite a kerfluffle.

But to the blogosphere I say: let us not get bogged down with JDawg or the sweatshop he is trying to pass off as web 3.0; for we know that Jason has, historically speaking, been economical with the Truth. Let us instead work to identify the key trends at play, so that when the future comes, we will know it when we see it.

I propose the following as trends or issues that will be a part of "the next big thing":

1. as machine intelligence gets commoditized, value will shift to human intelligence
2. blogging continues to proliferate
3. solving the identity issue
4. falling costs of creating a startup
5. RSS as the standard for distributing media
6. open source production communities becoming the status quo for software development
7. blurring the distinction between content and advertising
8. content continues to move towards being free, shareable, and remixable
9. web services continue to move towards personalization
10. social shopping, aka community-based ecommerce

I think we may see companies that can come up with ways to participate in all of these trends -- and in doing so, will find themselves well-positioned to be "the next big thing."