Digital Storytelling

Well I have completed assignment #3 and I guess I didn’t quite connect it to my actual blog spot, so for those of you who wanted to hear what I thought about O’Reilly’s essay entitled Web 2.0, Just click here. Once you get to the site locate the heading entitled Assignment #3, scroll down to comment, there you will find me reflections posted as the third comment.

P.S.

Mine is the comment under Ashley A. Gaston.

O’Reilly’s article on Web 2.0 was interesting. It’s hard to believe that it was written almost five years ago! After reading it and seeing names like Amazon, Gmail, BitTorrent, and iTunes made me think it was relatively new. New as in, within a year or two, but five years really shows me how long I’ve been really involved with these “Web 2.0″ sites. My brother and I thought Napster was the coolest thing when I was going into middle school and him high school, but then we started getting viruses so that had to stop. I didn’t realize being that young, that I was participating in something that could be called Web 2.0. The same goes with Bit Torrent, which I didn’t know about until about 2 or 3 years ago. I thought it was relatively new then! What was weird though, was that in the article O’Reilly seemed to praise the technology that allowed everyone to be a part of the server. Usually Bit Torrent software, in my eyes at least, has often carried a somewhat negative connotation that goes along with pirating music, movies, software, et cetera. So it was kind of neat that O’Reilly thought it was cool enough to be considered Web 2.0.

Another strange thing in the article was when O’Reilly talked about mobile devices, as in i’Tunes and i’Pods, the huge market in that, its innovation and et cetera. But what I thought of even more so than i’Pods was my brother’s new phone the Droid X. To my knowledge this phone’s application store contains pretty much anything and everything. Today my brother called and told me that he had installed a Super Nintendo emulator on this Droid, for free of course, then his next course of action would be acquiring ROM’s for the emulator which are merely a few mouse clicks away. This phone and its marketplace exemplify Web 2.0 to the umpteenth degree. The community makes the applications, many of which are free, and with the Droid’s incredible amount of computing power these applications take the mobile phone to the next level.

The Web 2.0 qualifications are all recipes for success. However,  I don’t think anyone has done, or will do, as well as Google has. Google is becoming an internet leviathan, and what’s more is, I like it. What can’t Google do? They control how we search the web, they read our email, they control what we watch, they know where we live. What’s not to love?

“Leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.”

-Tim O’Reilly, What is Web 2.0

In short, Web 2.0 is the web I’ve unknowingly watched come to fruition throughout my 21 year childhood (I just turned into an adult, so I can write about those days fondly and with much wisdom from hindsight.– One drawback to written communication via the internet? Communication tools such as the sarcasm I just called upon are less easily detected. So I’ll just blatantly call the sarcasm. I digress). I’ve always known the internet to be a progressive entity– always changing. Up until reading, “Web 2.0,” however, I always attributed changes in web technology to the collective ideas it embraces and allow. I never before thought that somewhere in the history of the internet there was a monumental shift in software framework to allow the existence of that collective fluidity.

I suppose my point is that there was a change that occurred, allowing for the inclusion of many people as cooperative programmers and administrators, before the web as I know and engage it became possible. Technology’s own survival of the fittest, if you will. I never knew to distinguish between 1.0 and its superior sequel– the age of flickr and wordpress and google and geeks being cool.

I’m glad to know of the literally life-changing change of focus for web features, because as a person very much on the edge of self-service and data management (as in not one of the majorly contributing, centralized and crucial computer geeks) I am one of those lives changed by the 2.0. I am no stranger to advocating its benefits– even before I could put my finger on the details of the technological innovations geared towards a broadening user base, I was preaching its gospel. That is, I became the first amongst my group of friends to engage the web through blogging, flickr, twitter, and youtube (I feel like that sounded like I’m trying to make myself sound cool, when I am well aware that the phenomenon of the modern internet is made possible by the fact that many thousands were joining in these programs at the same time as me. Thus, I am not that cool. But then, these advancements make each person feel that cool. That’s the magic of playing the web towards participation). Even then, I believed strongly in the power of the potential audience out there through the world wide web. What makes Web 2.0 run, though, is not the volume of the audience, but rather the volume of users.

Web 2.0 is marked by a list of competencies expected of each new company. The first item on the list is a company characterized by free services (ie, the database that is google) as opposed to the obligation to purchase a server and individual software tools. As seen in the decline of Doubleclick and the subsequent rise of Overture, as in the rise and fall of Netscape, Web 2.0 is not so much about publishing or the power exerted by advertisers as it is so much about consumer participation and the collective power of many small sites.

A second requirement for a 2.0 company is the control of data sources– exemplified by hyperlinking (driven by repetition and intensity), yahoo! for cataloguing information, ebay for collective market exchange, and Amazon (utilizing user engagement to distinguish itself from other data sources). Insights from these basic principles lend themselves to the creation of even stronger links that do not just control information sharing between 2 sites, but rather allow for a continuous stream of information from any given site.

The third competency deals with owning an application’s core data, given that the majority of information on the internet is not actually published with rights. It is not only important to own the core data, though– 2.0 is largely based on trusting people with dispersing that data and letting go of the hard boundaries of copyright. Fourthly, Web 2.0 exists to provide a service, not to sell a product. It wasn’t until reading this that I thought to be truly appreciative of the free service of google and flickr.

The fifth principle stems from the idea of free information sharing– making data available to different audiences through syndication instead of controlling information at strictly two ends. Number six involves making use of the web and the design of 2.0 to give quality to single devices not traditionally tied to the software of any one computer. Number seven leaves the door open for more successful models for business and development, driven by the competitive nature of growing user experience.

This is the nature of the modern internet. There are still questions in my mind regarding the collective function of (what are to me) broad terms such as server and interface and domain and software and coding. But I recognized in this article’s description of 2.0 the face of the internet I have come to know well–as a person merely populating the edge of the web with a little blog space and some flickr photos.

“Leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center, to the long tail and not just the head.”

-Tim O’Reilly, What is Web 2.0

In short, Web 2.0 is the web I’ve unknowingly watched come to fruition throughout my 21 year childhood (I just turned into an adult, so I can write about those days fondly and with much wisdom from hindsight.– One drawback to written communication via the internet? Communication tools such as the sarcasm I just called upon are less easily detected. So I’ll just blatantly call the sarcasm. I digress). I’ve always known the internet to be a progressive entity– always changing. Up until reading, “Web 2.0,” however, I always attributed changes in web technology to the collective ideas it embraces and allow. I never before thought that somewhere in the history of the internet there was a monumental shift in software framework to allow the existence of that collective fluidity.

I suppose my point is that there was a change that occurred, allowing for the inclusion of many people as cooperative programmers and administrators, before the web as I know and engage it became possible. Technology’s own survival of the fittest, if you will. I never knew to distinguish between 1.0 and its superior sequel– the age of flickr and wordpress and google and geeks being cool.

I’m glad to know of the literally life-changing change of focus for web features, because as a person very much on the edge of self-service and data management (as in not one of the majorly contributing, centralized and crucial computer geeks) I am one of those lives changed by the 2.0. I am no stranger to advocating its benefits– even before I could put my finger on the details of the technological innovations geared towards a broadening user base, I was preaching its gospel. That is, I became the first amongst my group of friends to engage the web through blogging, flickr, twitter, and youtube (I feel like that sounded like I’m trying to make myself sound cool, when I am well aware that the phenomenon of the modern internet is made possible by the fact that many thousands were joining in these programs at the same time as me. Thus, I am not that cool. But then, these advancements make each person feel that cool. That’s the magic of playing the web towards participation). Even then, I believed strongly in the power of the potential audience out there through the world wide web. What makes Web 2.0 run, though, is not the volume of the audience, but rather the volume of users.

Web 2.0 is marked by a list of competencies expected of each new company. The first item on the list is a company characterized by free services (ie, the database that is google) as opposed to the obligation to purchase a server and individual software tools. As seen in the decline of Doubleclick and the subsequent rise of Overture, as in the rise and fall of Netscape, Web 2.0 is not so much about publishing or the power exerted by advertisers as it is so much about consumer participation and the collective power of many small sites.

A second requirement for a 2.0 company is the control of data sources– exemplified by hyperlinking (driven by repetition and intensity), yahoo! for cataloguing information, ebay for collective market exchange, and Amazon (utilizing user engagement to distinguish itself from other data sources). Insights from these basic principles lend themselves to the creation of even stronger links that do not just control information sharing between 2 sites, but rather allow for a continuous stream of information from any given site.

The third competency deals with owning an application’s core data, given that the majority of information on the internet is not actually published with rights. It is not only important to own the core data, though– 2.0 is largely based on trusting people with dispersing that data and letting go of the hard boundaries of copyright. Fourthly, Web 2.0 exists to provide a service, not to sell a product. It wasn’t until reading this that I thought to be truly appreciative of the free service of google and flickr.

The fifth principle stems from the idea of free information sharing– making data available to different audiences through syndication instead of controlling information at strictly two ends. Number six involves making use of the web and the design of 2.0 to give quality to single devices not traditionally tied to the software of any one computer. Number seven leaves the door open for more successful models for business and development, driven by the competitive nature of growing user experience.

This is the nature of the modern internet. There are still questions in my mind regarding the collective function of (what are to me) broad terms such as server and interface and domain and software and coding. But I recognized in this article’s description of 2.0 the face of the internet I have come to know well–as a person merely populating the edge of the web with a little blog space and some flickr photos.

I don’t think I can whole-heartedly agree with the whole Web 2.0 theory. Now, I understand that new applications such as Napster and Wikipedia are more popular than “Web 1.0″  applications, but I don’t believe that they’re completely different entities that we can treat them as different eras of the internet.

I don’t know if anyone remembers Xanga, but I sure do! I may not use that as my main social networking site, but it still exists as a main form of communication for some people. And the same goes for Myspace- it’s not necessarily as popular as Facebook for keeping in touch with friends, but people are still creating accounts on it. I guess my point is that I don’t think that the web “crashes” and then just cleans its slate with these brand new applications. Granted, the newer applications can be more user-friendly and more useful, but it doesn’t make the old ones obsolete. But I guess I could just be taking the term “crash” too literally.

I really liked the section in this essay about the importance of blogging. I believe that blogging was such a great invention! It really is like a diary (except your annoying little brother doesn’t have to snoop around your room looking for the key). I like the idea of connecting with someone who has the same interests as you, without having to exchange any information. For instance- I sometimes follow food blogs because I absolutely love to cook and I sometimes would rather have fresh new ideas than a stale cookbook. Blogs are just great ways for people to connect based on similar interests. And when your interests change, so can the blogs you follow.