BBC News has an interesting article about the future of “Web2.0” sites and development, interviewing the man who coined the term Web2.0. Seems like, if he only knew the silliness about to be unleashed on the Internet, he might have named it something different or avoided it altogether.
But much though he may sourpuss at the irrelevance of some Web2.0 applications, the fact is that we are by and large fairly frivolous people with fairly frivolous interests. It doesn’t diminish the Web2.0 brand to see that silly little social applications have been built, it reinforces the relevance that the Web2.0 evolution has had in that powerful concepts have invaded the simplest of communication. To be sure, loading down browsers with a ton of irrelevant JavaScript crap is not what the originators had in mind. They had it in mind that we would “harness collective intelligence.”
Weep for the lost opportunity if you must. But what they didn’t have in mind – indeed, what the visionaries of our society so rarely ever have in mind – is the sheer volume of our collective intelligence occupied at all moments with the research and development of fart jokes.
