Is Web 2.0 the Advent of the Post-Modern Internet?

jg21 writes "Web 2.0 Journal has an essay on 'The Post-Modern Rhetoric of High Technology' in which the author contends that Web 2.0 is nothing less than 'the advent of the Post-Modern Internet. Will Web 2.0 be a revolution or a mere rebellion?" From the article: "Web 2.0 can take two distinct directions, and it is perhaps the rhetoric of it all that will define the path. Web 2.0 can be the French Revolution of Technology or it can be the American Revolution of Technology. Joseph Schumpeter's winds of creative destruction are blowing especially hard in the Internet technology world today, with remarkable improvements to our daily lives. But these winds can blow too hard too often, and an even older economic law, the Law of Diminishing Returns, begins to take over. Our wild-eyed radical phase must ultimately give way to some replacement. We cannot permanently be the rebels."

Comments

Re:Postmodernism applying to the internet?

[Spasmodeus]

I believe this is the output of the Postmodernism Generator, which, in a fit of recursive postmodern irony, is virtually indistinguishable from the output of genuine postmodernists.

Web 2.0....And I thought it meant that..

[the_rajah]

I'd have to run a new cable connection to the Internet version 2.0.

According to Wikipedia, "Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004[citation needed], refers to a supposed second-generation of Internet-based services such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies that let people collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways. O'Reilly Media, in collaboration with MediaLive International, used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences and since 2004 it has become a popular (though ill-defined and often criticized) buzzword amongst certain technical and marketing communities."

Ill-defined hardly describes it. If it's that nebulous, don't bother me with it, especially if it's from that guy on Fox or some marketing dweebs.