[Air-l] how to pin down web 2.0

[danah boyd]

Alex - while i totally agree that it's gotten conflated in all sorts  
of ways, i actually do think that it is an effort to signal a shift  
that has taken place.  The shift has multiple dimensions, some of  
which are business, few of which are technical, most of which are  
social.

I've written parts of this in different places.  Many are under  
"Design, Web2.0 and Social Software" at http://www.zephoria.org/ 
thoughts/bestof.html

Social technology practices have changed dramatically post-crash.   
Much of this has to do with the fact that so many people are online  
and it's no longer a marginalized minority.  People are organizing  
around friends (and Friends) instead of around topics of interest.   
The structure is built on networks of people and information instead  
of room and place metaphors.  Corporations are motivated to help  
people connect and share rather than just buy.  Sure, there was a lot  
of early CMC tools that were adopted en-masse but community sites  
like The Well never scaled to the degree that the current ones do,  
nor did they provide the same types of socialization opportunities  
for mainstream culture.  Uploading media was a bitch if you didn't  
have a unix account and a decent webserver.  Now, hosting and  
locating media is not the issue.

You're welcome to ignore the term "web2.0" (and i definitely have  
huge huge huge problems with it) but it's  meant to signal a shift  
that people know and can feel, even if they can't describe.  Of  
course, it's an ugly term... but so is blogging and we've (finally)  
embraced that.  Blogging is a good example of something that was not  
a shift in technology but in practice.  I think that the same is true  
in what web2.0 is meant to signal.  This is one of the reasons that i  
absolutely love Michael Wesch's Web2.0 video.  It points at the  
evolution of practices that have come to be called Web2.0.  I  
genuinely believe that it does mean something, although i agree that  
all terms conflate and fail to support clean definitional  
boundaries.  :: shrug:: But i'm ok with that.  Language is about  
impressions not precision, even if we wish the latter.

danah



On Apr 21, 2007, at 8:23 AM, Alex Halavais wrote:

> Again, my greatest concern is that it doesn't mean all that much,
> while conflating far too much. Lane's post notwithstanding, Web 2.0
> seems to be little more than a shortened way of saying something about
> the Web as it is used today. In other words, Web 2.0 is the Web: why
> proliferate terms in an area where we already have a surfeit?

- - - - - - - - - - d a n a h ( d o t ) o r g - - - - - - - - - -
"taken out of context i must seem so strange"

musings :: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts