Against Web 2.0

[to read the full discussion started by this text go the iDC list archive] 

David Weinberger, blogging philosopher and author of “Small Pieces Loosely Joined” said in a recent interview:

“some 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 2.0 is 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 O’Reilly 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 “cooperation-enhancing technologies.” 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 “sociable media” 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.

 

Update on May 31, 2006 at 15:49 by [Trebor]

[This is a follow-up to my original post on the iDC list.] 

It's uplifting to read Matt Waxman's beautifully enthusiastic testimony to sociable media. I'm with you, Matt. While criticisms related to the participatory panopticon (David Golumbia) and the artist as beta-tester for the industry syndrome (Rob van Kranenburg) are valid, they should not keep us from using sociable media to our advantage.

"Competitive branding became a necessity of the machine age ­ within a context of manufactured sameness, image-based difference had to be manufactured with the product."

Naomi Klein (2000) No Logo. London: Flamingo. p 11.

Adam Hyde writes that being annoyed by Web 2.0 obscures the fact that it is actually achieving what many of us have been hoping for: "Isn't it all just namespace?" Who cares about terms like Web 2.0? I do, as branding is meant to explain and frame the world and the way we act in it. The official discourse of Web 2.0 has become an important
placeholder for corporate agendas. It attempts to frame the emergent phenomena of podcasting, blogging, social bookmarking, wikis, RSS, Wikipedia, and strangers-helping-strangers-to-find-info networks. The corporate buzzword machines spits out more trend-aware terms by the day: "crowdsourcing," "synergy," and the various false renditions of the term "friendship."  

The term that is so close to Mr. O'Reilly's heart that he now tries to patent it. He sits in his office and writes cease-and-desist letters that he sends to those who want to use "Web 2.0" in the title of their event, as Ken Jordan informs us. Can you hear the echo of "Let's not be the paramedic for the crashed brand name Web 2.0" throughout the
blogosphere?

<http://www.techmeme.com/060526/h1210>
<http://www.whak.com/off/?206>
<http://www.whak.com/off/?207>

Armand Mattelart describes the progression of branding:

 "During the second half of the 1990s ... marketing went through what has retrospectively been called the branding revolution. Beginning with the proliferation of Customer Relations Management in the 1980s (Turow, 1997) brands began to be understood less as Œsymbolic extensions of products¹ (cf. Gardner and Levy, 1955) and more as virtual communities constructed in media-space (Arvidsson, forthcoming;  Lury, nd.). Brand value was increasingly understood to derive not so much from the product itself as from the particular experience or emotion that resulted from the inter-textual links that brand managers constructed around the product (Shields, 2003; Lash, 2002). "

Mattelart, A. (1996) The Invention of Communication, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, p.11.

The "construction of virtual communities" with devices of affect make Web 2.0 a picture book example of branding.

I am against the term as the new newness that it proposes is a lie. (Thanks, Alex. I share your analysis.) The sociable web media that the term refers to are not new. Online group formation is not new.  A useful text in this context is Christopher Allen's "Tracing the Evolution of Social Software." The level of sociability and participation in the web applications in question has reached a new level. In March the Web had a total of 694 million unique visitors (ie. 152.1 million in the USA and 74.7 million in China) and The Washington Post reports that in March 2006 alone 15.6 million people used Blogger.com, and that MySpace.com had 37 million contributing visitors that month alone. Such social networking sites attracted 45% of active Internet users in the US in April.

<http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/10/business/ptend11.php>
<http://www.whak.com/off/?208>
<http://www.cybersoc.com/2006/05/nearly_50_of_us.html>
<http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/10/tracing_the_evo.html>

Consequently, I disagree with David Golumbia who writes that "these features were in many ways inherent in the network for a long time, and that they are not going to "transform things" now any more now than they did before." The surfership is not merely online for a kind of neo-psycho-geo drifting (Richard Rogers' term). Full-blown transformation is already taking place and this change is reflected by Eric Kluitenberg who writes that the "quest for self-determination ...
and people's understanding that they are not merely consuming a product, but that they are actually participating in a meaningful social process not guided by an extrinsic logic (profit), something that rather has intrinsic, or 'sovereign' value." I much prefer Yochai Benkler to Mark van Doorn who constructs unlikely linkages like that between the
experience economy and business' deepest desire to care for people's wellbeing.   

Benkler describes the transformation that David questions:

"The networked information economy makes individuals better able to do things for and by themselves, and makes them less susceptible to manipulation by others than they were in the mass-media culture. In this sense, the emergence of this new set of technical, economic, social, and institutional relations can increase the relative role that each individual is able to play in authoring his or her own life. The networked information economy also promises to provide a much more
robust platform for public debate. It enables citizens to participate in public conversation continuously and pervasively, not as passive recipients of ³received wisdom² from professional talking heads, but as active participants in conversations carried out at many levels of political and social structure.  ... At a more foundational level of collective understanding, the shift from an industrial to a networked information economy increases the extent to which individuals can become active participants in producing their own cultural environment. It opens the possibility of a more critical and reflective culture."

Benkler, Y. (2006) The Wealth of Networks. New Haven: Yale UP. p 130.

This describes some of the ongoing transformation of sociable web media that foster sovereign, democratic values. They are not a fad but a fact, as Benkler puts it.  And with Jon Ippolito, I invite you to give it a go.

Web 2.0  R.I.P.