I see a consensus around that web2 is about values rather than tech (see also page 17 of my report here). Alorza expanded my three layers model to five (mine was already a re-elaboration of a visualization by Forrester); Paul Johnston exposed a similar concept at a workshop two weeks ago.
I recently read Pekka Himanen, the Hacker Ethic, and realized that in fact the values of web2 are exactly the same that he describes very effectively: openness, mutual sharing, passion, creativity, peer review, fun, rejection of hyerarchies.

Then he writes (sorry my translation from italian):

 “we have seen how this model (hacker) can create great things in the cyberspace without the mediation of companies and government. It remains to be seen which great things the direct collaboration of individuals can do in our “flesh and bones” reality”

Which is a great anticipation of what we see happening, at least partially, in services such as patientopinion.
I often say that web1 was geocities with 250K personal homepage, while web2 is 70 million blogs. It’s a difference in scale that generates a difference in nature. A quantitative difference that generates a qualitative difference.

That’s the same about the values. Web2 is the hackers’ values, being taken up not by a group of geeks, but by a generation of people. And that makes a hell lot of a difference.

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