---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: [iDC] Against Web 2.0 From: "Trebor Scholz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Fri, May 26, 2006 10:52 pm To: "IDC list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Weinberger, blogging philosopher and author of ³Small Pieces Loosely Joined² said in a recent interview: ³some of the talk about Web 2.0 makes me want to point back to Clue Train Manifesto. The only part of the Web 2.0 stuff that I have a reaction to is when Web 2.0 people say- now at last the Web is for users and users have a voice. And I want to say: NO, back from the very beginning what drove people onto the net was not so that people can shop at Amazon. Weblogs and all that have made it way, way easier but the Web has always been about voice and conversation." <http://www.whak.com/off/?202> I agree. Online sociality is old: It goes back to the beginnings of the Internet. You don't have to be a media historian to understand that. Online sociality is new: It has reached a new level of participation, in some cases even interaction. Today, sociality online is empowered by easier-to-use tools, broader access to bandwidth and technology as well as a deeper familiarity with the tools. When I first came to the United States, I met Annette Michelson, professor for cinema studies, in her New York University office. She asked me why I decided to move to the US. A bit tongue-in-cheek, I responded that I did not come for the American Dream. I remember it like today: her eyes turned dark, then a moment of silence, ... then she raised her voice: "Don't you even MENTION the American Dream to me. It does not exist." Russell Shaw's in his recent Zdnet article "Web 2.0? It does not exist" does not argue that Web 2.0 does not exist just like Michelson surely did not doubt that there are people who follow the American Dream. Russell Shaw just turns his back to the suggestion that there is a rebirth of the Web. <http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=805> Wikipedia states about Web 2.0 as "a social phenomenon referring to an approach to creating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use." The encyclopedia continues by characterizing Web 2.0 as "a more organized and categorized content, with a more developed deep-linking web architecture." They also refer to a "shift in economic value of the web, potentially equaling that of the dot com boom of the late 1990s." The term Web 2.0 is yet another fraudulent bubble designed to trick investors with pretended newness. It's just like McDonald's re-stacking their greasy beef layers to sell an entirely new product every 6 month. I'm not at all suggesting, however, that the phenomenon behind the term Web 2.0is corrupt. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0> The term is attributed to corporate "futureneer" Tim O'Reilly who convened a Web 2.0 Conference in 2005. (White male faces dominated this conference just like other O¹Reilly events.) The Wikipedia DEF for the term Web 2.0 links it to what some people see as a second phase of development of the World Wide Web. <http://www.whak.com/off/?203> <http://www.web2con.com/> Other terms kicking around include groupware and the term social software that was mainly used in the early 1990s. It stood for people connecting or collaborating through networked communication technologies. Howard Rheingold referred to sociable web media as ³cooperation-enhancing technologies.² Cooperation, in contrast, is a less intensive form of working together in which participants account for gain or loss individually. Contributors have individual goals. While collaboration is a risky, intensive form of working together with a common goal. The gain or loss is shared among all. The term sociable web media is surrounded by this discourse. Edward Barrett, lecturer in the MIT Writing Program introduced the term "sociomedia" in the book of the same title. Judith Donath wrote on Sociable Media for The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction. <http://smg.media.mit.edu/> <http://www.whak.com/off/?204> <http://smg.media.mit.edu/papers/Donath/SociableMedia.encyclopedia.pdf> The term "sociable media" is used by the MIT Sociable Media Group, for example. They define ³sociable media² as engagement with issues of identity and society in a networked society. "Sociable," for me, means approachable. Webster defines "sociable" as " a) being inclined to seek or enjoy companionship and b) marked by or conducive to friendliness or pleasant social relations." A sociable online environment is open to contributions. But that does not mean that it is social, that is has a community of participants. Opening a room does not mean that people will come to party. "Sociable" alludes to the possibility of sociality. I use the term sociable web media. Next time you hear Web 2.0 feel the sour aftertaste. ---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: [iDC] Against Web 2.0 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, May 31, 2006 8:50 pm To: "IDC list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is a remarkably predictable, slightly draining, ever-repeating cycle. Once an argument is made that a networked technology has positive social effects or that there are really existing economies emerging from it or that sociable media can be used against the intentions of their inventors -- there are always people stepping to the front who take that argument, push it to the absolute extreme ("computers will save the world") and then stop there ("utopian notions of community," "sociable media as fad.") It's labor-intensive to keep up, some give up on emergent media. (It takes me about two hours a day.) Just for a moment picture that people who argue for sociable web media have critical faculties. Somebody who finds blogs or RSS or podcasts empowering, may well be aware of the participatory panopticon and clearly see the corporatization of open-everything. Soft coercion through networked, casualized labor and all that hell of the networked lifestyle may actually be on her mind. Just imagine that. She agrees that "mass communications systems largely serve the interests of power." She reads media history and does not buy into into the overdetermined liberation-talk about blogs. But she may have also read the "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyberdissidents" and thus know what blogs can do to real dictatorial regimes. She read about the SMS Sydney Riots last December, the role of texting in the Phillipines, East Timor, China, and at the Republican convention in NYC. <http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/handbook_bloggers_cyberdissidents-GB.pdf> < http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/02-goggin.php> <http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64536,00.html> <http://www.whak.com/off/?210> <http://www.whak.com/off/?211> <http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-01/30/content_516405.htm> To argue, ignoring all this, that "computers are not the answer to the world's social problems" is, well, troublesome because they are *an* answer to *some* social predicaments. The Internet is not the savior that comes along on a white horse swinging the golden sword of salvation. The World Wide Web is not the cure to the planet's diseases. But it may help connect researchers to find a remedy. The Internet is not the cash cow for the populace but it does create alternative sharing economies. (It took Benkler ten years to write The Wealth of Networks, I'll not make the case here in passing). How about a balance between enthusiasm and critical distance? Just imagine that. Trebor <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4492150.stm> <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/4696668.stm> <http://www.streamtime.org/> <http://www.daoudkuttab.com/> <http://indyblogs.protest.net/> <http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_25/b3938601.htm> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_informatics> <http://www.unmediated.org/archives/resources/> <http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_10/tatum/> <http://www.mediacenterblog.org/events/06/wemedialondon/home/> <http://conference.oc-tech.org/> <http://www.netaction.org/training/index.html> <http://www.whak.com/off/?209> -- rohrpost - deutschsprachige Liste zur Kultur digitaler Medien und Netze Archiv: http://www.nettime.org/rohrpost http://post.openoffice.de/pipermail/rohrpost/ Ent/Subskribieren: http://post.openoffice.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rohrpost/
