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July 24, 2005

The politics of Web 2.0

Susan writes:

Jeff Jarvis has a good post today about all the feeds, conversations, aggregations, and other kinds of thingies that make up what he calls Web 2.0. He says, "This is a new architecture. It's a dynamic architecture."

It's even more than that — it's political. These meta-informational thingies are letting us see our online environment in ways we can't possibly see the offline world. What's important isn't just that these thingies are dynamic (although that's clearly important) but also that they can be (1) visualized and (2) affected by the attention of individuals. When humans can see something and act on it, they are suddenly in charge of their own environment...

I haven't been a booster of the "Web 2.0" phrase because it sounded like something a conference organizer desperate for novely came up with. AFter all, the Web has always been more than a set of billboards. Ever since JavaScript — every since the "Submit" button? — the Web's continuously been bringing itself alive. But Susan has convinced me that that's like saying "Weblogs are nothing new. I was FTP-ing posts every day in 1994." Yes, I'm sure you were, and Notepad is the greatest.html_editor.ever, dude. But the fact that weblogs are so much easier now means that tens of millions of people are able to write them, and that's a real difference. Likewise, put all of the Web integrative pieces together and make them available to more and more people, and you're talking about something different because you've changed the politics of the technology. [Technorati tags: web2 SusanCrawford]

Posted by D. Weinberger at July 24, 2005 07:50 AM

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» Web 2.0 becomes official buzzword ... from mediatope II
... i suppose, after david weinberger gave in und begins using bthe term himself: "But Susan has convinced me that that's like saying 'Weblogs are nothing new. I was FTP-ing posts every day in 1994.' Yes, I'm sure you were,... [Read More]

Tracked on July 25, 2005 04:57 AM

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Tracked on July 25, 2005 11:24 PM

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