For the last few weeks, after encountering a couple of blog-posts on the subject, I’ve been mulling over this concept of “web 2.0.” I am wondering why and how the term carries so much (at least in the blogosphere) currency right now, and fascinated by the myriad of recent posts that attempt to define what is, and (even more interestingly) what is not, web 2.0. (Anne 2.0; Anshu Sharma; Ian Delaney; Stephen Downes to refer to just a few)
So beyond asserting ”it is impossible to define web 2.0″ what questions can we ask about how the term comes to have resonance and serve as a motivational force within certain rhetorical contexts? Although I am still working through the issues, I want to begin to begin to articulate some of my own responses to various attempts to pin down this thing that is “web 2.0.” What motivates these definitions or (mis?)usages of the term?
One of the most dominant themes is that as version two, web 2.0 is not only an improvement of, but also in many contexts framed as something that is avowedly not web 1.0. It is something new, and definitions of the new form will typically list how and by what means this new technological form performs differently to its aging relative. Here, Web 1.0, with its largely static pages, its privileging of “traditional” forms of publication and communications, conventional cataloging and metadata systems is cast as somewhat retrograde and unmalleable antecedent, even foil, to the infinitely more flexible, democratic, open, and user-centered promise of web 2.0 technologies. It’s this epochal (if sometimes implicit) tendency to define Web 2.0 in opposition to a so-called bygone era of “Web 1.0″ that I am most interested in.
Judy O’Donnell’s recent post over her frustration with her academic advisors stands as a good example of how the concept is very much one in (vexed) negotiation right now, and highlights the very material consequences that emerge from such misconceptions. For her, the fact that Ph.D. advisors have assigned readings for her program that are out of step with contemporary discourse about learning in web 2.0 environments is indicative of what she calls “web 1.0 thinking”:
Here is an example – the reader for Learning Environements, which I must read (ok, I can do that) but which I also have to demonstrate that I understand (!) contains 16 papers, all from the 90s, and one only from 2001. Now you and I know that this represents Web 1.0 generation of thinkers. Even if they are ‘cool constructivist thinkers’, they are talking about a learning environment and learning landscape that is rapidly becoming irrelevant. While it is important to ground current research and learning in past knowledge and research – I do not have this option.
She is told: ”You can add a bit on about Web 2.0 if you like, but do not make it the main thrust of your paper. You must demonstrate that you understand our philosophy.”
This, for a student who has opted to focus on Web 2.0 as a topic, is understandably a real blow, and she is now forced to think about changing institutions and programs. Stephen Downes own wry comment on the matter is that “we must be on to something if education doctoral programs are advising that students should not focus on web 2.0.” Certainly, I agree, and empathize wholeheartedly and from experience with O’Donnell’s concerns here. I see a lot of buzz and a lot of misunderstanding over “web 2.0″ or the “read/write” web. People–especially academic administrators–know that “blogging” and “podcasts” and “social networking systems” are the next big thing, but just what those things are, and why they signify something new for education is not necessarily clear. In my work, I spend a lot of time explaining how new technologies we develop can enrich learner’s experiences and transform pedagogy, but in the end, technology is not enough–and this is sometimes the hardest part to communicate to academics and educators who see us as the responsible (and accountable) “experts” on these matters.A “web 2.0″ technology does not necessarily a “Web 2.0, transformative, constructivist learning environment” make. All the collaborative/interactive technologies in the world, will not necessarily render an online course instantly more “connectivist” or “constructivist” in approach. For instance, how much will students become “active” learners when traditional lectures are available to user both IRL or via a downloadable podcast? The answer depends on what the students do (or are required to do) with that lecture download–just as much as it depended on what they would do before, during and after a lecture on the “old days.” Certainly technology can faciliate a shift in pedagogy, but not automatically form the basis of that shift.Another example is the University of Pennsylvania’s move to have students create Academic Blogs as part of the admissions process. If universities require students create a private blog where comments are switched off and audience comprises only of the advisors and university officials who screen an application, then why a blog? Why not a personal essay done in a word processor and an electronic dropbox? Why does the rhetorical context here call for a blog?
While I cannot comment on O’ Donnell’s specific case, I do wonder if the rejection of Web 2.0 as a motivational term in her work is less about a rejection of “Web 2.0″ as a theoretical/pedagogical premise (a rejection of the online pedagogical principles laid out so usefully by Stephen Downes and George Siemens and others) and more about a fundamental miscommunication over what Web 2.0 might mean. Is the sweeping of Web 2.0 under the carpet in this case (and others) really about conserative “Web 1.0″ thinking, or more about a tendency to read the meaning of “web 2.0″ off the instrumental technologies that appear to make web 2.0 possible?
In other words, is there a tendency to think that web 2.0 is can only be defined in regards to the technologies that appear to make this thing we call Web 2.0 possible? And why would this be a problem anyway?
Certainly, the first coining of the term by O’Reilly in 2004, provides us with what looks like useful metric for discerning the difference between “old” and “new” web:
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DoubleClick |
–> |
Google AdSense |
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Ofoto |
–> |
Flickr |
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Akamai |
–> |
BitTorrent |
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mp3.com |
–> |
Napster |
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Britannica Online |
–> |
Wikipedia |
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personal websites |
–> |
blogging |
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evite |
–> |
upcoming.org and EVDB |
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domain name speculation |
–> |
search engine optimization |
|
page views |
–> |
cost per click |
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screen scraping |
–> |
web services |
|
publishing |
–> |
participation |
|
content management systems |
–> |
wikis |
|
directories (taxonomy) |
–> |
tagging (“folksonomy”) |
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stickiness |
–> |
syndication |
As Paul Graham points out, this initial usage was less about proposing a “new version” of the web, but more about inventing a new catchy term that would suggest–in light of WWW fatigue and the dot.com slump–that something new was in the offing: “They just wanted to make the point that the web mattered again. It was a kind of semantic deficit spending: they knew new things were coming, and the “2.0″ referred to whatever those might turn out to be.”
Much of the epochal and celebratory (and conservative) rhetoric surrounding “web 2.0″ is at times disconcertingly familiar. In the mid nineties, we were doing exactly the same thing–but this time, “the web” was pit up against a series of “non digital” foe. Within a lot of the early theories of “cyberspace” (Turkle, Rheingold, Stone, Mitchell, to name just a few) the drama of the new, the revolutionary, and the subversive was played out in contrast to an former, more traditional and less progressive time. Belonging to this former period are the outmoded cultural artifacts of the book, the narrative film, the chemically produced photograph, all antiques of a pre-hypertextual era where knowledge was physically contained or delimited in discrete forms, where we were “led” through the narrative as passive consumers. Now, as users, we were immersed in an “interactive” culture that, apparently, transformed us from couch potatoes to agents in the construction of our own multiple narratives and identities.
Here the meaning of the “new digital age” was read off the technologies in question, and so for all the celebration (or commiseration) that herein lay the epistemological shift to define an era, the theories still participated in the dominant progressivist narrative of scientific and technological “evolution.” Here, and arguably now, the major claim was that formerly antiquated modes of cultural production lacked the essential characteristics of digital representation, which privileged indeterminacy, multiplicity and “laid bare” the heretofore mystificatory and naturalized processes of meaning-making. Often glossed or ignored in these accounts of the inherent interactivity and “writerliness” of digital imaging is how all such interaction or communication takes place within specific given conditions and institutional structures.
While I do not want to suggest that Web 2.0 was/is an empty term, or set its usage up as a strawman to show how we are committing all the same errors, what I am interested in is how and for what purposes Web 1.0 becomes the defining “other” or “outside” to web 2.0. It is this gesture I think we need to be careful of, even while we usefully galvanize the theoretical concept of Web 2.0. As a scholar with a cultural studies bent, I see Web 2.0 less as a revolution in technology than as an acceleration of an already-occuring epistemological shift triggered by modernity. Just when this shift was triggered is obviously up for debate, but just as the “dawning of a digital age” did not mean a turn away from “passive” modes of consumption and production, nor does web 2.0 signal a break from conventional and intractable forms of an older, flat, world wide web.
Just how transformative, constructivist, democratic, and new Web 2.0 is depends on the specific and material contexts of its uses (and how, in turn, we read them). As I’ve mentioned before, “mommyblogging” for me is an instance of this potential transformation; but on the other hand, it is also an instance where largely white and middle-classed western women get to write the stories of “motherhood.” ”Blogging” is not instrinsically radical or democratic–far from it. But does it signal some shifts in forms of communication and the distribution of representative power? In many specific, material contexts yes. (and also no).
So, on one level “web 2.0″ for me is not a useful phrase, for it suggests a breaking away from something by means of new technologies that is not necessarily the case. On the other hand, as a term to usefully describe this ongoing shift, this ongoing turn to new forms of communication and of being, then at this moment in time, web 2.0 is doing its job. As long as we remain grounded in the address of situated contexts of usage. The term is usefully bringing critical theoretical and social issues back to the forefront, and once again highlighting that change–however slow, however uneven–is afoot. And for that, it is very useful.
