February
Casualties of the Web 2.0 Revolution
In some ways Web 2.0 is a bit of a disappointment. Professor Michael Wesch, in this beautiful video, defines the early internet as purely hypertext–about linking information. He holds “Web 1.0″ over and against Web 2.0, which he characterizes as the separation of form from content using technologies like XML in order to empower the participation of people in a network that connects, reforms identities, and challenges old concepts. It is a very nicely done video, but I question the over-simplification he uses to make his definition of Web 2.0 significantly different from what came before.
In the video, Wesch goes back to 1996 to show us an example of “Web 1.0.” He was trying to define it as a mechanized system of linked information. By the time I got embedded in the internet in 1997 (a latecomer), kids empowered with services like Hotmail and GeoCities were creating their own websites about all kinds of subjects. The whole internet was a social network. Inspired by rhetoric that discussed “Cyberspace,” many of us imagined the internet as a whole other world where our persona was not limited by physical bodies or personal history. We met people from around the world, changed form in MUDs, and addressed complex ethical questions in our new anonymous world. I sat at home in North Carolina and built meaningful friendships with people in Oregon, Florida, Israel, and Russia. I fell in love in a world made of bits, bytes, language, and imagination.
Somewhere along the way Instant Messaging came along with ICQ and then AIM, and massively multiplayer 3D games replaced MUDs. The old “limited” technologies died and with them went the concept of a shared electronic world. The cartography of the internet was flattened. Chatting became little more than a multi-threaded replacement for the telephone. No one talked about “the information super highway” or the land it traveled through. Social networks ceased to be uniquely conceived web experiences and grew more and more into what resembles fancy interlinked phonebooks. As Web 2.0 was really being born, something else was dying.
I think that those most enthralled with the term Web 2.0 are often people who never really experienced or participated in the magic of what came before it. Digging around The WayBack Machine is like trying to experience the past looking through a book of photos–if the landscape and people in those photos is foreign, then of course it’s easier to think it was inferior and distant. Since the mid ‘90s, there has not been a time when the internet didn’t contain all the romantic elements that Wesch ascribes to Web 2.0. The machine has always been us, the web has always linked people. The only difference is that now the technology gap is shrinking fast and everyone can participate.
Much as I hate to admit it, Web 2.0 is a revolution. Like any revolution, it isn’t without its casualties. Libraries are burned, old ways demonized and forgotten. The web plebian has overthrown the webmaster and, while Web 2.0 is egalitarian and powerful, it lacks the luster and romance that Cyberspace once had. And of course we have propagandists like Wesch to portray “Web 1.0″ as barbaric and mediocre.
You can keep your Podcasts and YouTube that try so hard to be different but still rehash 50-year-old media forms–your safe friend’s lists and social networks that exist outside adversity and diversity. I want my CGI chat room back. I want the dream that the internet was about freeing the mind in some new and cerebral media that no one had yet experienced. Guess I need to wait for Web 3.0 when retro-web is cool.
Later, when talking to my wife–the girl from Oregon I met in the chatroom in ‘97.
(11:55:16) dawntreader000: the new web is all about linking people who already know each other
(11:55:26) bensari93: nice way to sum it up
(11:55:34) dawntreader000: the “social networks” confine people much more than the old web used to.
(11:55:46) bensari93: gated communities
(11:55:56) dawntreader000: Yes. A reflection of our society.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
“The only difference is that now the technology gap is shrinking fast and everyone can participate.”
Morgan, don’t you think it’s a huge difference?
You’re right when you say this is a revolution. The playing field has been leveled to the point that anybody with an Internet access (don’t even need a computer anymore) can take part in the conversation.
As Web pros, we probably feel like mainframe programmers felt a few decades ago. Change is good though. The alternative would be kind of boring…
February 6th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Of course a brief minutes-long video summarizing a decade of change is an oversimplification - it couldn’t be that short if it weren’t!
I agree with Karine’s general point - something has changed. I don’t think the general concepts have changed too much. It’s the scale by which which those concepts are employed that has changed. And that has been driven by, IMHO, ease of use. Of course there were people making webpages in the mid ’90s and I’m sure that some of them were very comparable in many ways to the most popular webpages we visit today. Just as people were sharing mp3s before Napster. But it’s become so much easier that it’s becoming much more widespread.
I’m not sure that all of is really a revolution, though. Closer to evolution and maturation. Napster and the explosion it created in the music industry and the ever-growing aftershocks now challenging intellectual property as viewed by youths - *that* is a revolution. Blogs and user-generated content? Revolutionary in some contexts (e.g. mass media) but not in this context. It’s become much easier and perhaps we have reached a tipping point but the web has always been user generated from Berners Lee’s conception of HTML as a means of marking up and linking scientific documents at CERN to Mr. T Ate My Balls and onwards.
I think we can appreciate the evolution that has taken place without downplaying either the true revolutions that have taken place or the historical contributions of those who came before (and are still with us). Isn’t the fact that we’re transparently using software written by someone else hosted on a distant webserver administered by someone else to discuss a video created by someone we’ve never met encoded in a format that we don’t know evidence of significant evolution? We did all of this without even thinking, just typing some word into a little box and pressing “submit.” I don’t know if it’s a revolution but we’ve definitely come a long way, baby.
February 7th, 2007 at 12:14 am
“I think we can appreciate the evolution that has taken place without downplaying either the true revolutions that have taken place or the historical contributions of those who came before (and are still with us).”
True enough. I just get all reactionary and put on my devil’s-advocate hat when I hear people using the word “revolution” way too much and ascribing all sorts of things to Web 2.0 that are as old as hypertext. Things *have* changed and evolved. In many ways it is better. I do love blogs, love WordPress, and even YouTube, but I am serious that these advances have also come with a significant loss. Call it “routinization of creativity,” but I think there is something about the internet that is so much more hum-drum than it was in the late ’90s. Here are some books that talk about subjects you just don’t hear about anymore:
Benedikt, Michael ed. Cyberspace: First Steps. Cambridge: MIT, 1991.
Johnson, Steven. Interface Culture. San Francisco: Harper, 1997.
Lévy, Pierre. Becoming Virtual. Trans. Robert Bononno New York: Plenum, 1998.
Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1993.
Rheingold, Howard. Virtual Reality. New York: Touchstone, 1991.
Sardar, Ziauddin and Ravetz, Jerome eds. Cyberfutures. London: Pluto, 1996.
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen. New York: Touchstone, 1997.
Take a look at the descriptions of the topics they cover–they make our current batch of futurists sound boring. But I’m guilty of over simplification as well. Someone could write a whole book on how web philosophy has changed. It probably has to do with the dot com boom and bust as much as anything.
I find it hard to describe this concept of loss. I appreciate the ease of use as much as anyone. I appreciate that folks can now have their own sites whereas once they felt learning HTML was too much of a barrier. I appreciate that I will have ways to shield my young son from things I don’t want him seeing. In general, I appreciate the comfort of it. At the same time, there’s a problem with all of that. I can’t quite put my finger on it to give you an analogy.