Web 2.0

by Garry Cook

Need an explanation of Web 2.0? And an examination on its impact? Here we go:

Heard the one about the technophobe who, when asked what he wanted for his birthday, said ‘Web 2.0’. If you don’t know what Web 2.0 is, the joke isn’t funny. It’s not even that funny if you do know what Web 2.0 is.

The point is, Web 2.0 is not something that exists, either in a box, on a disk or in cyberspace.

Web 2.0 is as baffling to those of us with a decent understanding of computers as a mobile phone is to a pensioner. I think it’s time for an explanation.

For what follows, I’m assuming that you know what the internet, the world-wide web and the information super highway is. The fact that you’re reading this says that you do.

Right, now that’s out of the way, the nitty-gritty.

Without knowing it, you are probably part of Web 2.0 now. If you use Wikipedia or have a Myspace account you’re already there. Perhaps you’re a blogger. All these things are the essence of Web 2.0.

Sites like Myspace, YouTube and photographic site flickr are the driving force behind Web 2.0 – where the internet has morphed from a surfing experience to an oven-ready publishable world for everyone.

Web 2.0 has enabled internet inadequates to have an online presence. Don’t know how to design a website - don’t worry, it’s all done for you.

These new web pages, each with a community of millions (if not billions), have been like a second wind for the internet which, up until now, has been primarily a tool to research information and occasionally to earn money (visit a porn site).

Now, powered by broadband’s speed, the internet has reinvented itself as a social network. It’s people joining the party on a massive scale.

Picture Web 2.0 like this: Everyone’ has moved into a brand new apartment block. Each apartments size is identical, but the user can dress it up however they like.

What I’ve noticed about the internet, however, is how it eventually costs us. Take Microsoft, the only real choice for consumer computers. They charge a fortune for their operating system, then keep updating it s you have to pay for it all over again.

Same goes for virus software. Also Microsoft’s email - Outlook Express and Hotmail - was once free but now requires a subscription. More money slipping out of our bank accounts.

With media mogul Rupert Murdoch buying Myspace for USD580million earlier this year, YouTube being bought by Google for USD1.6bn (and the Murdoch agreeing a USD900m deal for advertising with Google), and Yahoo buying flickr’s creator Ludicorp Research and Development in 2005 for an undisclosed fee, you have to worry about the independence of Web 2.0.

After all, the brilliance of Web 2.0 has been how independent revolutionary sites have caught on and spread like wildfire. Without advertising, it has been world of mouth – the consumers – which has made these sites a success.

But with these huge corporations now in charge – and Google now looking all too powerful and making some strange decisions (like publishing entire books online without, apparently, paying the authors) – you have to wonder how our freedom of choice is affected.

As consumers, if our search engines become increasingly exclusive to those sites or shops who pay to be on them, how do we know that the internet is still helping us get the best deal?

As seekers of the truth, can we trust these mega-corporations not to feed us their own biased take on events and politics. Or will these sites become as blatantly biased as the British newspapers and television stations which the same company owns?

Yahoo recently supplied the Chinese government information on the identity of one of its people who had dared to criticise their politics. They should not have done. It was grassing at a hideous level. This is both an abuse of power and a worrying indication of the things to come.

Then there were personal details of Google users published online by accident. If information is power, somebody somewhere is getting very strong.

And the danger is not just to our pockets. Socially we could suffer, too.

Sometimes we run out of milk in our house at night. On my walk to the local petrol station I walk past a house where the curtains are always open. Inside, no matter what time of night it is, there is always a women in her thirties sitting on her couch tapping away on a laptop. She’ll be on some chatroom, no doubt

The danger is, while online lives will never become as real as real live (no matter what soundbites your are fed by the media), they could easily take up as much time.

Sad b******s - and I use the term loosely to describe chatroom addicts, text message maniacs and online gamers – who spend every waking moment conducting relationships through brief broken English sentences are not the kind of people I’ve got any respect for whatsoever.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with meeting someone online, or using an internet dating agency, but there are people who are slowly retreating into sub-standard personalities in the real world while developing obsessive attachments to their return key.

Marvel at the internet, enjoy watching 24 hours after it’s been broadcast in America, have a hurrah for Web 2.0, but don’t become a mute human. And keep an eye out. You are being watched from inside your own home.