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

[Sam Ladner]

Hello all,

Funny -- this exact same conversation was happening on the IDC list as well.
People were amazed and impressed, others were critical, some found redeeming
qualities, and in the end, everyone seemed to agree that it was a nice
installation but could not serve as a substitute for scholarly work.

The irony I noticed on that list -- and on this one -- is that we all use
the listserv (decidedly NON-Web 2.0 technology) to engage in a fundamentally
social activity of deciding scientific (read: scholarly) norms. If anything,
then, this video has produced a Web 2.0 type of reaction, which isn't really
Web 2.0 at all, but more Kuhnian.

Does this video tell us anything about the structure of scientific
revolutions? No.
Does this video invite us to participate and debate? No.
Does this video detail the nuance behind social computing in general? No.

Great news! Guess we all still have day jobs.

On 2/13/07, David Brake <d.r.brake at lse.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> 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/
> dealingwithemail/>
> callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)
>
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