The above video was a project of assistant professor Michael Wesch of the department of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University.
Titled “The Machine is Us/ing Us,” the video is about Web 2.0 and has been viewed about 700,000 times in the past 16 months.
You should understand the basic concepts of Web 2.0 in about 5 minutes.
What is Web 2.0?
I am guessing that even if you’ve never visited eBay, Amazon, or Craigslist, you’ve heard their names; maybe read business profiles in mainstream media, such as Time magazine; and have an idea what each website is all about.
I bet you’ve also heard of MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube.
These six sites help define the culture of Web 2.0, which Aaron Landry in a recent presentation to nonprofit managers defines as “the idea where instead of translating traditional media to work online, you utilize the power of the Internet to work in new ways and to connect with people more directly.”
Keeping Facebook in mind, here is a list of the top 10 ways Web 2.0 sites are changing society, according to Internet Evolution.
Eric Olson agrees society is better because of Web 2.0 but questions whether we’re in an innovative lull.
Who are the Web 2.0 innovators?
In Web 2.0 Heroes, a book I am currently reading, author and technologist Bradley Jones interviews 20 innovative professionals — some people you know and many you probably don’t — and asks each person to describe their background, their site’s technology, how they view the rise of Web 2.0, and where they perceive the online future going.
Representing a number of companies and technologies including Microsoft, Adobe, Sun Microsystems, Ning, LinkedIn, and Zoho (some I’ve never heard of, either!), these men and women make some profound statements.
What do the Web 2.0 heroes have to say?
The most important thing is even though we felt in the ’90s that the Internet was having a big impact in people’s lives, we’re seeing in this decade that it’s reconstructing a lot of industries and shifting a lot of value around while improving people’s lives.
– Rodrigo Madanes, product strategy manager at Skype
Web 2.0 is about how businesses are changing, how people are collaborating, and how people are unlocking content to be used in new and innovative ways through customization, at orders of magnitude of less cost than they’ve ever had before.
– Rod Smith, vice president of emerging internet technologies at IBM
…a lot of Web 2.0 is about authenticity, accountability, interaction, and this idea of the people-powered or the social web.
– Dorion Carroll, vice president of engineering at Technorati
The Web is increasingly a social environment and…people are using it to communicate with one another, like they’ve always done — but now in such an open way.
– Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter
Questions
If I asked you the question, “What is Web 2.0?” would you be able to answer?
Do you understand Web 2.0 a little better now than you did at the beginning of this post?
Before you scrolled down, had you heard of Web 2.0?
Did the video make some sense to you?
If you’re moved to post a comment by clicking the below link, I’d love to see your thoughts.
UPDATE: You can read more about my Heroes series here.
Is Web 2.0 the reason I have to click 2.0 different “Post a comment” links to get here? 🙂
Have you read the article from the current Atlantic (link below)? It postulates that the use of the internet is actually changing our brains.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
Dick: I hadn’t seen that article. Thanks!
I read the first few paragraphs to see where Carr was going with his theory, and by scanning longer passages, the initial idea did not change.
Three comments on that piece:
First, he quotes everyone from HAL in “2001” to Socrates; how is that any different than hyperlinking, propelling the reader to the very data that Carr claims the Internet is causing? He even has a link to Socrates.
Moreover, this is on a web page; what does the print version of this story look like? Is there a print version?
Second, Carr ironically commits what one of his interview subjects rejects: long blog posts. Is a magazine online article not a blog post when there are “article tools” at the page bottom for emailing, Digging, Redditing?
As proof, pathologist Bruce Feldman says in the piece, “I can’t read War and Peace anymore. I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”
Third, I take books out from the library every week. I’m about to walk over there and check out two more titles on reserve for me. Not e-books but real physically-bound books with paper and ink. Am I Carr’s exception?
I have not seen the article on line (except to get the link for you). I’m a subscriber. I read the “dead tree” version. I hate reading text on a screen, and never chase the links, as that is too distracting.
I, too, am a book reader. But, in another dose of heavy irony, I am currently reading the new translation of Herodotus, which is so heavily footnoted, it might as well be full of links. 🙂
Ari –
Thanks for the comments on the Web 2.0 Heroes book. I appreciate you taking the time to read it and to comment on it. The book was interesting and fun to pull together as many of the people I interviewed had great stories to tell.
Brad!
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Bradley L. Jones