[Air-l] Web 2.0 - "the machine is us?"

[David Brake]

Wesch does an excellent job in a brief presentation of providing a  
tentative definition of 'Web 2.0' and hinting at its possible  
impacts. He does not attempt to provide a clear explanation of the  
ways in which Web 2.0 is distinctly different from 'social software'  
that has been around on the Internet since the beginning (Usenet,  
mailing lists, collaboratively authored FAQs etc) nor does he discuss  
the implications of the fact that Web 2.0 users are still a minority  
of users and active Web 2.0 contribution is largely the work of a  
still smaller minority (something I recently posted about in more  
detail on the Media at LSE weblog here):

http://groupblog.workasone.net/archives/2007/02/overstating-the- 
significance-of-web-20/

But of course a 5 minute video is not a paper so that would be too  
much to expect - the video would make an excellent starting point for  
discussion of these issues in a classroom.

---
David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London  
School of Economics & Political Science
<http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ 
mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm>
Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/  
(personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog)
Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ 
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