Wednesday, 15 April 2009

What is Web 2.0?

It depends which book you read or which guru you listen to. But basically it is a loose and unplanned confederation of functionality on the web, which acts together like some giant organism. Perhaps a coral reef is a better analogy. Beautiful to look at, but what's it for? Under threat from predators, in the shape of the environment and divers. At best, it is a collaboration experiment on a grand scale; collaboration of both creativity and chaos. It is natural selection at work. The fit survive and people vote with their feet. Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Amazon, YouTube. Today's superspecies. Tomorrow's dinosaurs? What are the small mammals waiting in the trees for their turn to inherit cyberspace? Who are the birds of the air or all-pervasive insects? Twitter? Aptly named perhaps.