The real Web 2.0

[cheeni]

I swear, I'll wring the neck of the next person who mentions the words "Web 2.0" anywhere near me.


Wikipedia defines it thusly,

Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing 
transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of 
websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving 
web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 
services are expected to replace desktop computing 
applications for many purposes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Yes, this is all true, but only an idiot wouldn't have seen it coming umm... about 8 or 9 years ago! Wasn't that what Hotmail was all about?

So, what then makes Web 2.0 so special? My personal, not-so-tin-foil-hat theory is that it's merely a marketroid buzzword designed to inject enthusiasm into the sagging (as of two years ago) internet industry. More recently, the internet business has found its footing again, and we are seeing a rash of new ideas, mostly aimed at beating or joining Google. Let's celebrate it, yes, let's call it Web 2.0!

But, really, it also leaves a lot unsaid about the real Web 2.0, here's why:

1. The world gets orders of magnitude more spam today than it ever did in 1997. Yeah, that's web 2.0 too.
   
2. We didn't have non-existant DNS entries hijacked by domain registrars back in the day,
   
3. why, what we really have is DRM 2.0. Take that Napster...
   
4. I've nearly bid adieu to Usenet, and IRC. It's really the network effect kicking in, there are a few old timers hanging around, but really, there isn't enough action happening to justify a faithful presence.
   
5. What we have are ISPs wanting to charge toll on traffic passing through their networks. We knew this was coming, we thought it'd be Microsoft, and so we battled their attempted hijack of TCP/IP, but we lost sight of the grand telco mergers. *sigh*
   
6. Where have our civil liberties gone? The Web 2.0 way is to use Carnivore 2.0
   
7. The web 2.0 will be so much fun with multiple root servers. It'll be great to be back in our walled gardens...
   
8. The web 2.0 is about blocked ports and office firewalls...of course it's also about ubiquitous internet access, and drive by hackers and worms.
   

I was hoping to list an even 10 points, but I've already overstretched my time. So there you go...love it, pan it, whatever you will, I think the mushy love for Web 2.0 stinks of naive sheeple being preyed upon by marketroids.

Comments

[mannu.livejournal.com]

You might be interested in the opinions on Tim O'Reilly (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html) and Paul Graham (http://www.paulgraham.com/web20.html). It started as a conference.