[iDC] Against Web 2.0
David Golumbia
dg6n at unix.mail.virginia.edu
Fri May 26 17:23:46 EDT 2006
I just want to echo Trebor's comments--I've been waiting for someone to
call this BS for what it is, more marketing-speak that helps us to ignore the
cultural politics of what is happening before our eyes.
To begin with, it should really be "Web 3.0," or maybe "Web 1.0 version
2," since what we are really talking about is just letting the web do the
things that it seemed to be on the way of doing, prior to the 1996
commercial deregulation that should never, ever have happened. In my view,
"Web 2.0" is what happened when money was let loose to overwhelm all other
purposes of what had been, till then, the largest noncommercial media
project in human history (maybe now that's Wikipedia). That "Web 2.0" puts
commerce first, people second, almost all the time. All the places where
the web is exploding, it is commerce, not political democracy, that also
seem to be exploding. (or did the US have a wonderful social revolution in
the last 10 years, fueled by the Internet, that I missed while we edge our
way as close toward totalitarianism as we have ever been?)
Money isn't always bad, and hasn't done only bad things, but I would be
holding out much more hope for the internet as even a constructive
contributor to democratic change if it was much more like it was prior to
commercial deregulation--and very little I see in the current so-called
"2.0 technologies" seem like anything but much more of the same. And to
bring in its wake the same old apologists who are dying to tell us this
one technology is going to change everything. Sociopolitical change
requires sociopolitical thought and action. I have yet to see any concrete
reason to believe the Internet pushes people more toward sociopolitical
engagement: in fact, I see plenty of reason to doubt it.
David
--
David Golumbia
Assistant Professor
Media Studies, English, and Linguistics
University of Virginia
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