Sneak has been in this game for a little while now, but the power of boffins to reduce his brain to a quivering mush of jelly seems to be undiminished. At a recent event hosted by IBM to celebrate and discuss the future of web science, Sneak felt distinctly uneasy. Now Sneak fully understands that the web is a marvelous and complex beast and that some form of academic rigour crossing technological and sociological boundaries needs to be invented to study its many facets.

But when Berners-Lee gets going in a room full of web scientists and engineers, there's only one way it's going – straight over Sneak's head. Micro this, macro that and quantum the other – sorry guys, you're doing a grand job but Sneak reckons he'll just wait until these ideas are distilled into a media-friendly sound bite … like Web 3.0. Hurrah.