Fabrica Somnium Elucido
Web 2.0: People, Conversations, and Community
Good evening. My name is Matt Williams and tonight I'll be talking about the "new" web; web 2.0. It's a phrase that's been bandied about a lot, but I'm going to focus on what I believe truly differentiates Web 2.0 from its predecessors and all which has gone before. People. Conversations. Community.
The medium is the message.
In 1967, Marshall McLuhan had already envisioned the internet. He believed that we live in a global village -- a simultaneous experience where the purely visual is too slow to be relevant.
He felt that the dominant communication media of our time shapes the way that we think, act, and perceive the world around us.
The greatest impact of the introduction of the World Wide Web is that finally anyone could become published. Thus the net became a hotbed of liberty and equality -- everyone has an equal say on the web, democratizing speech.
Everyone's equal. But of course, some are more equal than others, depending on popularity and search ranking. Quality need not denote popularity.
The main problem, of course, is that the original web was, like traditional media, a broadcast only form. Content was pushed by providers to an ever increasing audience. Originally, there was no way to provide for any sort of interaction.
Content was king in the 90's. Who had the most. Who had the most interesting. Sometimes even who had the best.
Traditionally the internet, as a home for free speech has fostered an independent mindset. This anarchist approach to the net as an adhoc collection of servers and users spread throughout the world did not sit well with sitting back and being a captive audience. They wanted to create and participate.
In the early 1800's, Alexis de Tocqueville toured the United States and wrote Democracy In America. He considered democracy to be an equation that balanced liberty and equality -- concern for the individual as well as the community.
Additionally de Toqueville captured over 150 years ago the writing style of the modern net.
Have you ever watched a flock of birds or a school of fish? Isn't it amazing how they decide, despite seeming to be a chaotic mass, the direction in which they are going to travel? They're able to do this through collaboration and communication with each other. This collaboration allows for a organized whole to be derived from seeming chaos.
Captain Jack Harkness of the BBC series Torchwood remarks "The twenty-first century is when everything changes." And it is very true. We're at a cusp where media is becoming more participatory than ever before.
Participating with others shapes our experience of the world and at the same time, it shapes us.
This image gathers together the most common aspects of Web 2.0.
Some people dismiss web 2.0 saying it was already part of web 1.0. I think that the major differentiator is the emphasis on interactive communication and community.
From collaboration and communication the form of web 2.0 emerges from the noise.
I think of the following as my preamble to an internet constitution:
We, the people of the internet, in order to form a more perfect global family, establish understanding, insure the dissemination of knowledge, provide for fundamental human and civil rights, promote free speech, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this constitution for the internet.
In Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams explore how some companies have used mass collaboration and technology to be successful. They identify a number of traits which are key to this mass collaboration to work: Openness, Peering, Sharing, and acting globally.
It's easy to feel insecure in this brave new world. External events attack our sense of self and can cut us off from others, causing us to believe that we're alone.
The net allows us to break down the barriers and to build communities.
Given the unsettled nature of our world, community and understanding are more important than ever.
Histories and stories are important. Stories tell who we are and from whence we've come. Most of all, stories are a way of building connections; whether it be as a family, a people, or the human race.
The net makes it easier for us to share our stories. We can connect other's stories with our own.
But most of all, we can find that we are not alone.
Twitter is an example of technology and social interaction coming together. Users can follow each other through their daily lives and experiences. Twitter is a way of telling stories, 140 characters at a time.
I think twitter, like any tool can be abused, but it has value in lowering the barriers to communication and community.
It seems that every service which we use on the web wants some sort of contact information. But we don't really want to hear from some marketroid -- we want to hear from people. Real people with real experiences. Real people with real stories to share.
Smart companies are ones that realize this and help us to connect and share our stories with each other.
Social media is an idea which combines technology, social interraction and the construction of words, pictures, or other forms of media.
The people provide the media and the interactions. The network ties it all together.
This community allows us to create a truly global village.
In the process of building communities, one important fact arises: the whole is bigger, stronger, and better than the sum of the parts. By collaborating with each other, we can pool our resources, knowledge, abilities, and experiences to create an overmind -- a community mind which encompasses more than any one person can comprehend.
Facebook is an excellent example of a site where tools for communication and collaboration are provided, but content developers and deliverers determine how the tools are used. Facebook is successful in part because they had the wisdom to relinquish control and loosen restraint, which has provided fertile ground for creativity.
It's important in the process of communicating and building community to remember ourselves and our self. It's easy to lose our sense of identity.
Individuals create community by forging bonds betwixt themselves. While it is easy to apply a label to describe a community, we need to remember that we're all unique, each with our own value.
So, to wind things down... What is this web 2.0 thing all about?
Web 2.0 turns the broadcast model of web 1.0 upside down and focuses on conversation. Conversation builds community in our global village.
The important things to remember are People, Conversations, and Community.
