After reading chapter 5 of David Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous, I feel that the main reason such a book even exists can be found if you read between the lines on page 90. There, Weinberger describes how "The Getty thesaurus is a mighty tree but, like all such projects, it can strive for comprehensiveness only be reducing the richness of what it's comprehending." The idea that classical systems of knowledge organization are limited is addressed multiple times throughout the book, but it is only at the end of chapter 5 do we see it start to tie into What is Web 2.0.
That article, written by Tim O'Reilly two years before Everything is Miscellaneous, describes how the web is undergoing a fundamental change. Web 1.0 focused on services and products created and sold through traditional means. A baker that wished to sell bread online would make a website that listed each item he sold with a price. An option to purchase online might be available, with set shipping and handling rates. That was Web 1.0 and, for a long while during the 90's, it worked great. With the dotcom bust, a change of thinking was required. This change of thinking applied to many aspects of the digital world, one of which both authors write about: data.
Data, or information, is the new currency of the world. Unlike resources that are limited by their physical nature, data is unlimited. This becomes apparent in both texts when discussing shared or collective knowledge. Wikipedia is the example used by both to show how, unlike traditional thought, where we must rely on a limited body of experts to parse knowledge, allowing anyone the ability to write, edit, and delete articles can actually create a better user experience. Everything is now, in my opinion, best left in the control of the user. Creating walled gardens is a poor choice, as instead of keeping the 'bad' in, you are keeping the 'good' out.
Web Squared, a follow-up to Web 2.0, was written two years after Weinberger, but focuses on the same subject: information. Technology has always been improving itself, and so even now, barriers such as bandwith and storage, no longer exist in most cases. All three articles understand, with increasing accuracy, that the power once afforded only to groups of experts and those that appoint them, is now being spread out to anyone with an internet connection.
I see a definate connection between the Web 2.0 and Weiberger's Everything is Miscellaneous through online users. People who use the web are the ones who add the data and then categorize it. I hadn't thought about the collective intelligence part of it, though I can see how it ties into users putting the data on the web.
ReplyDeleteYou write that "the ability to write, edit, and delete articles can actually create a better user experience", but for anyone who is unable to manipulate computers of a website, does it really create a good user experience? Or for someone who enters new information and has that manipulated by someone else in a negative way, what happens then?
ReplyDeleteI like what you say about information being the new currency of the world, and that it is unlimited. However access to that data can be very limited. People who do not have access to technology, especially those who are unable to afford it, and are now left with no actual currency, and no information. I also find it interesting to think of how different data, and meta data would be if we had everyones input.
ReplyDeleteI'd be curious to hear a bit more about how you see the Web Squared article dealing with the topic of "information." I think I know what you mean, but it would've been nice to see the connections made a bit more clearly. Overall, the summaries and connections here are well made....I just got hung up on that last point as it felt cut short. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteYour discussion of Web 2.0 versus Weinberger has given me an interesting thought:
ReplyDeleteWeinberger is always talking about how we tend to categorize things in our mind and organize them... Well, Tim O'Reilly's article about Web 2.0 has done just that. Almost anyone in our generation or the one directly before ours could pretty much tell you that the web has been undergoing some changes from the late nineties to the O'Reilly era. All kinds of shiny little buttons have showed up, and all of the romantic notions of some beautiful product that O'Reilly talks about. Well, O'Reilly is doing just that- organizing the Web's history. Before I ever took a DTC class and knew of Tim O'Reilly, I knew that there were some big changes happening in the Web and the way business was conducted through it. I knew all of the implications for businesses that he has made me aware of, but by making such a word as "web 2.0" and discussing the tangible changes from web 1.0 to 2.0 has given us a big mental shift in the way we see the web. Never before had I seen Gmail and though "oh this is SO web 2.0" or looked at some nasty data-entry form online and though "gah, look at this web 1.0 artifact" until I read that article. As Weinberger says, we're inclined to make little organizational systems, and Web 2.0 is Tim O'Reilly's way to dissect and split the stages of our little internet's life.