Due before class on Tuesday, September 7th no later than noon.
Read and blog your questions, ideas, and thoughts about Tim O’Reilly’s essay “What is Web 2.0?” Please blog at some length about the ideas here, claiming not to understand and limiting your post to one or two sentences saying as much does not constitute a thoughtful response. You need to both list and struggle with the questions you have, while at the same time outlining and relating some of the salient points in the reading.
Additionally there are a few other things I will have expected you to do by next Tuesday, September 7th.
- Add your domain info, preferred email, twitter account, and blog URL to the Course Directory (you will be updating this regularly over the course of the semester)
- Add everyone’s blog in this class to a Feed Reader
- Start commenting on each others posts (best get into the habit now!)
- Explore themes and plugins for your blog. Be sure to check out Matthew Keaton’s tutorial for experimenting with themes, and this tutorial for exploring and installing plugins should also be useful. Finally, be sure to write about your choices and process.
Gretchen,
Defeat quickly becomes triumphant. And for you Ashley, the blogs post should be rolling now.
Let me first begin by saying that I too am a visual and very hands-on learner. I do not say this as an excuse for miscomprehension but merely as a means of explanation.
As I read through O’Reilly’s essay “Web 2.0,” I noticed a few different things that I may have otherwise not ever come across. Firstly, I am not extremely knowledgable of the inter complexities of the internet, nor do I have a vast knowledge of computers but that does not mean that I am ignorant of these things either, merely that I do not attempt to know all that is needed to understand the internet. All of the different insite that I have gleaned from this passage is invaluable to understanding the depths of the internet. A fact that I find very interesting considering how common place the internet has become and even a facit of daily life and function. I wonder just how many internet users are blithely unaware of all that makes up our number one information source. Though at points this article was a bit over my head, as far as my previous knowledge of the fact, I feel that it has much to offer to the reader in additional information otherwise unseen/unknown.
Secondly, I too enjoyed the portion on blogging and even took the time to re-read this section. I found it helpful for understanding exactly what a blog is and the many different functionalities that a single blog can offer. I must say that my previous knowledge of the blog was very limited. I am one of those people who would see any site that allows a user to leave comments as a blog thus including websites like facebook and youtube. However, with my new found knowledge of the complexities that is the blog, I am way more interested in the different facits that the blog spot has to offer.
I see this article as important to not only a greater understanding of the web but also another helpful tool to the greater understanding of this class and not only digital storytelling but many different facits that shape our lives. In addition, I must also say that I was thrown off by parts of this article as well, partially because of my limited knowledge of the subject matter (as most probably). My knowledge of Google and it’s counterpart Netscape was somewhat confused and now I feel that I understand Netscape but not to the extent that was expressed through the article. In closing I rather enjoy the thought that each of us, as internet user share the title of authors of the internet. It never really occurred to me that each of us not only influence and are influenced by the internet, but actually make up the internet and this is the key point that I found to be most engaging. We are Web 2.0 and future generations will be an extension of the next version of the web. A rather empowering thought indeed.
I am admitting defeat and posting my response on here. If anyone can help me with figuring out how to blog and manage my site, I’d really appreciate. All I need is a quick tutoring session and I think I’ll be able to manage. Right now I’m just frustrated.
The “What is Web 2.0” article was a bit hard for me to tackle. I understand the basic concepts of the internet, but many of the terminologies used were a bit confusing. I didn’t realize there were distinctions in the web (web 1.0 and 2.0) their purposes. Throughout this article it is noted the changes and evolution of the web and the different elements that are offered. O’Reily explains Web 2.0 through the contrasting of Google and Netscape. One of the big arguments he makes is that Google is more prevalent to today’s technology than that of Netscape with data as a significant feature. The internet will continue to evolve as we discover and learn more about what opportunities there are to expand. Web 1.0 was the starting point and led the way for 2.0; in the same way web 2.0 is going to continue to propel us into future ideas and technologies.
Due to the nature of the class it was very interesting to discover that blogging is considered a feature of the Web 2.0 era. Blogging, simply put, is a way of making diary entries online. O’Reily even ventures to say that through blogging, connections with others are made as a means that RSS presents. As stated in the article, “RSS has become perhaps the single most widely deployed web service because of its simplicity.” I find this interesting because I have found setting up my blog and figuring it out quite challenging. A large reason for this is because I am a hands-on and visual learner in which I need to both see how to do something and do it at the same time in order for me to fully grasp the concept.
What is Web 2.0 does an excellent job of recognizing all the aspects of the web and going into some detail to help expand any novice’s knowledge on the subject. Personally I hadn’t heard of a large portion of the examples given by O’Reily, but feel that these are important for everyone to know as background information of a tool that people use every day. The diversity and wide range that the article covers is interesting and important to understand. This is also where my critique comes in. Since this article covers so much, it vaguely touches each topic and doesn’t fully explain one thing. The whole notion “I know a little about a lot but not a lot about one thing.” I’m not implying that I think the author is knowledgeable about everything he discussed, just that it would have been easier to comprehend and digest if there was more information on each thing.
Before when one goes into a story or listens to a narrative, he/she already has his own opinions, notions, and beliefs upon the topic at hand. These thoughts often alter the meaning and lasting effect of the dialogue upon the listener or reader. For me, coming into the article and reading the title; “What is Web 2.0″, I scoffed at the notion that the web over the past 20 or so years now has turned into something different. Now before you misunderstand me, let me explain that I realize the web is very different than it once was. The changes between the present internet versus the past internet are salient to say the least, and it is not worth divulging all of the new features and websites the web has to offer. What I mean to say is that I thought that the internet, though it may have updated, that down to the core past Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, it is the exact same thing: a network by which information is traveled. So going into the article with this notion, I found myself surprised upon a new realization slightly different then the thesis points of the article.
Before, when I was only a small kid using my father’s Macintosh desktop, Netscape was the means of accessing the world-wide-web. As explained in the article, Netscape is not a web-browser, but a company whose product is a web-browser that carries the company’s name. So from right at the start of the internet, the browser’s author was a company. However now, open-source browsers are abundant. Firefox, Chrome, and many others now dominated what was once Netscape. But the key point here is not that the websites are open-source or even that they are a service rather that a product like the article convinces the reader. It is the author. You may ask, “Google is also a company, what makes them different from Netscape?”. What makes the two different is that companies such as Google don’t rely on themselves to pump out information, rather, they rely on the gathered knowledge of all who access the internet. Because of this, the author of the present internet is not just a company, but the users of the internet themselves. Need I even mention the websites Youtube, Facebook, Wikipedia or programs such as BitTorrent or Frostwire to further my argument?
What I want the reader to take away from reading this article is a simple point, but extremely crucial. Though much of this information may be in agreement with O’Reilly’s article, the difference I want to make is that the article only used this point as a building block upon its myriad of reasons why the internet has changed. My argument is that, like a book, “Web 1.0″‘s author were companies, corporations, and other dominant businesses, but the reason why the Web has evolved and changed into “Web 2.0″ is the simple fact that it is being written by a new author; us.