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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November 6, 2008 at 12:13 am
I fully agree. My experience from Kublai, the Italian social network of creatives for regional development: a lot of artists stay out, because they don’t see the point of discussing their ideas with a bunch of newcomers who have yet to prove they can make a difference. On the other hand, a lot of web2 and communication people flocked in, because they are willing to play the game of mutual trust and openness up to a point.
November 9, 2008 at 11:02 am
Quite right!
Technologies embed values, and facilitate the appearance of new attitudes, relationships… and values. It is an entangled relationship but an interesting one.
And web 2.0 is a very sociopolitically loaded technology. That was one of the point the we used in this report about Web 2.0 in practice exchange in Europe Administrations: http://www.epractice.eu/document/3974