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?

[Umbral Blot]

I can't tell if you are serious (in which case I feel pity for you) or if you are brilliantly mocking the article.

Or it could just be...

[0racle]

A series of buzzwords.

Re:Or it could just be...

[Umbral Blot]

Post-modernism is a series of buzzwords. So I guess then yes, Web 2.0 is post-modern. How sad.

Re:Or it could just be...

[Sven Tuerpe]

It can't be a series of buzzwords, as neither "synergy" nor "paradigm" appeared.

This is why they call it post-modern.

That's amazingly stupid.

[khasim]

From TFA:

The Post-Moderns concerned themselves with the demolition of power-relationships, authority-structures, even the architecture of language itself. The results have been decidedly mixed. The nihilism of The Bomb, the ethical bankruptcy of eugenics and similar traffics in human suffering are examples of its negative effects.

Wow. So nuclear science is "post-modern".

No. This is another is the series of crap articles which claim that X is "post modern" because saying so makes you sound cooler and more educated than everyone else.

Post-modernism cannot be defined except by saying what it is not. It is not modern; it is what came after the Enlightenment.

If you cannot define something, you do not understand it. But feel free to claim that technologies are "post modern" because it masks the fact that you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Beside, when you get paid by the word, you really need something that you can pull a lot of words out of.

Re:just rethoric bullshit

[rs79]

Fair comment. People want stuff to work and with mapquest no longer working witn windows 98 because of this (even with the latest Opera) one is forced to believe he cure is worse than the disease.

Flashy is good. Working is better.

Hopefully in the next 10 years they'll get the bugs out.

Web 2.0 is the advent of

[ben there...]

...the New-Age Technological Philosopher. One who can pose abstract theories about the state of technology on their blog and have it linked to on major sites across the globe.

Now if I could just find one worth reading.

Summary and translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation:

The appearance of the "Web 2.0" jargon is a strong candidate for being the moment when the Internet jumped the shark.

Re:Summary and translation

[prockcore]

The appearance of the "Web 2.0" jargon is a strong candidate for being the moment when the Internet jumped the shark.

What I find ironic is that slashdot, a site dedicated to all things technological, has become the homebase for a group of people who seem to be against change of any kind.

They want to turn back the clock to the days when the web was basically the same as gopher.

It's a very utilitarian outlook. Just black text on a gray background without any interactivity at all.

Re:Summary and translation

[alienmole]

There's more to it than that. I don't think many people on Slashdot are arguing against technological advancement. It's more a question of arguing against the characterization of what's happening. Web 2.0 seems to be more of a social phenomenon than anything else, and many characterizations of Web 2.0 seem completely out of whack with what's actually happening, or what's actually changed.

Also, the Slashdot audience is more aware than most of the horrible technical kludges which underly Web 2.0: for example, Ajax is not a technology for the ages, that's for sure - it's a hackish workaround for a kludgey system which became wildly popular because of how unbearably restrictive what went before was.

When the Ajax honeymoon is over, there's going to be a helluva hangover: millions of lines of unmaintainable code that will either break and become unusable, or doom future browsers to forever being backward compatible, or more likely, some hellish combination of both. We better hope Web 3.0 kicks ass for real.

Oh, criminy.

[veg_all]

As we watch the advent of the Post-Modern Internet embodied in the Web 2.0 movement, we will see its effects reverberate throughout society.

What, oh, what will society do without a back button? This is possibly the most vapid article I've read in months. The analogy is weak and no attempt is made to develop it. The author has little comprehension of what the term "postmodernism" ever meant, even if it ever meant anything, apologies Jean-François Lyotard. Doesn't Zonk have something better to do with his time besides posting this kind of tripe? Oh, wait. I must be new here.

Re:just rethoric bullshit

[Lehk228]

mapquest never works. unless you want to find every closed road and construction site between where you are and your destination. for that it works great

Seriously?

[Etherwalk]

Oh, ridiculous.

First, postmodern means something different in different disciplines. In Literature and Film, it tends to be about breaking things apart into lots of little pieces and then doing critical analyses that pretend to be meaningful but aren't. (Actually, I think we're getting to a post-post-modern phase, where the tools of post-modernity are being used in a non-post-modern way. Garden State was a good example of this--it felt very post-modern, but it wasn't really post-modern.)

Second, the article exerpt (I didn't read the RTFA) says "Web 2.0 is slowing down, possibly a sign of it's reaching maturity. The boom is over!" Using bigger and more annoying words. I'm sorry, but the use of bigger and more annoying words makes me immediately think it's really stupid--not because of the presence of big words, but because of the ratio of syllables to content.

Third, Web 2.0 was more about integration and user-generated content than it was about... hmmm... well, okay, `integration of user-generated content' could take a hint of a stab at claiming to be something postmodern--but honestly, the content is too uniform to be postmodern. Ten million kids whining about their school day...

Hey, that does sound kind of postmodern. But they have to do it at the same time, wearing glaring colors. And maybe there should be a tuba?

I wonder if I can post that thought in a journal? I'll need to add more words... and colors. But they'll give me a Ph.D. Hmm...

An evil journal...

Not a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Give us something more insightful to discuss. Seriously, this is Slashdot, the average reader is slightly more in tune with reality than this. Nobody cares about what "the web two will be too". Web two-point-oh is "me too point oh," as in, you have zero points to share with the rest of us.

The people of Planet Kling?

[khasim]

Post-Modernism has a perfectly clear definition that makes perfect sense. It is, however, too stupid for any words in any language, except maybe Klingon.

:)
That's really funny!

The thing is that "postmodern" has a "definition" in art and philosophy the same as the musical genres "rock", "techno", "trance" and "rap" have definitions in music. And they're just as useless when describing technology. We know that "Web 2.0" cannot be "classic rock" because that was created years ago. But it cannot be "new wave" because that is almost as old. "Industrial" has come and gone so that was probably "Web 1.5". Rap is hot right now. Or is it hip-hop? No. "Web 2.0" is definitely "Celtic Fusion Invasion". And now I'll write an article saying that it is.

Web sites can be viewed as "art". But the technology is just technology. Paint brushes were used in "Classical" and "Romantic" and "Postmodern" art. Yet no one is claiming that paint brushes or canvases are "art 2.0" or "Postmodern".

Do websites have a "philosophy"? Is that philosophy shared amongst all Ajax-based sites? No. Ajax is the technology. Technology is not a philosophy.

And so forth.

Re:Read his bio at the end of that article.

[EricTheGreen]

And what idiot lists his "campus council" work in his bio once he's gotten his first job?

You're assuming he's had a real job before now....for my [limited] money, running around reviewing opinion polls for various politicos hardly qualifies as such.

Re:Postmodernism applying to the internet?

[Sage Gaspar]

I think in these comments we've achieved post-irony.

doubtful

[barutanseijin]

Having been in hackademia just as pomo was losing its sheen -- about 15 years ago -- I've heard all sorts of juicy stories about Foucault. Still, I've never heard that he was a pedophile -- unless you meant in the French-slang sense, where pede = homosexual man.

But aside from that, I don't think Foucault would approve of the Internet. He'd probably classify it as an architecture of surveillance, like the school or the factory. Can't say that he'd be completely wrong about that, either.

Mark Poster wrote an interesting book called the The mode of information in which he tried to link Foucault and some other pomo figures to the emergent forms of info-tech (c.1990). I think he was trying to connect Foucault to data bases. I didn't quite get it then, and it probably makes even less sense now, but it was still an interesting read. I've always meant to go back to it.

And no, pomo cannot be summarised as "think outside the box." It's more like "the box's interiority is always already circumscribed by the trace of its exteriority."

Freaking sick of this

[mcrbids]

Boy, I hear your music.

I'm getting just sick and tired of hearing about "Web 2.0" as if there were *any* advance or defining characteristic thereto. So far, all I've seen of "Web 2.0" is some incremental advances in the quality and utility of websites using javascript. Neat and fast, but also easily done using "1.0" technologies such as flash or java.

So, it's somewhat faster - wow! This is going to change the world!!!??!?

This is a slew of buzzwords looking for meaning. Asking about Web 2.0 is like asking about god - ask 10 different people, and you'll get 10 different answers!

1998 called - and they want their meaningless hype back. Call me when there's some substance!

Re:Freaking sick of this

[FuturePastNow]

All right, the buzzwords do get old fast. And you will get different answers from different people about what "Web 2.0" is. My answer is, Web 2.0 isn't about the technology, and people who think it is are way off. AJAX = yawn

Web 2.0 is about psychology, the way people use the now omnipresent network for communication on multiple levels. The internet started with researchers sending each other electronic mail. Now it's everyone talking at once, sharing all of their knowledge, opinions, and experiences with the whomever will listen.

One answer down, nine to go.

Re:Freaking sick of this

[trifish]

Now it's everyone talking at once, sharing all of their knowledge, opinions, and experiences with the whomever will listen.
Just for your information, these activities took place on Usenet back in the 1980's already. And if you say that masses didn't have access to it, then remember then second half of the 1990s? There were things called forums (web-based) and chat rooms. These things which you would call "Web 1.0" allowed you to do exactly what you said only "Web 2.0 psychology" brought: "everyone talking at once, sharing all of their knowledge, opinions, and experiences with the whomever will listen".

You ultimately proven what most of us here knew alread: Web 2.0 is yet another empty buzzword.

Re:Freaking sick of this

[badasscat]

"All right, the buzzwords do get old fast. And you will get different answers from different people about what "Web 2.0" is."

Whenever I hear someone talk about "Web 2.0" (and I *work* in web production, so this is becoming a real problem), I just substitute the term "Bubble 2.0" instead.

Everything that people talk about when they refer to Web 2.0 is something that's going to "change the paradigm" of how we live. YouTube is going to put traditional TV out of business, for example, because everything is now on demand. Google Maps makes Rand McNally redundant. MySpace will bring an end to the neighborhood book club. (And heck, Second Life will bring an end to MySpace while we're at it.)

This is all the same talk I heard back in 1998, and most of it was just PR hype designed to get VC money flowing in. When I see what's happening with something like Second Life right now, it is *exactly* the same thing. Whole lot of hype, huge backlash. Eventually, much of this stuff is going to come crashing down just as it did in 2000.

Because the fact is while a lot of these things are useful, they're at best increments to the way we already live, not wholesale changes. They're not replacing anything or "changing paradigms", they're augmenting existing paradigms. Worse, a lot of these companies still haven't figured out how to make money and are just relying on the hype and VC to keep them going (again, a lot like 1998-99). And the dirty little secret is, like the original Napster, nobody is really going to miss any of these things when they're gone. If Second Life or MySpace shut down tomorrow, it's not going to keep any of those people from socializing some other way, be it in real life or online or both.

So really, I don't think branding something as "Web 2.0" is at all positive. It's thinking about the web in the wrong terms - it's saying "ok, Web 1.0 didn't work, so let's come up with another set of features that promise much the same things and hope it works this time." That's not the way successful companies think about the web. The web is a continuous thing, there is no "1.0" or "2.0" or "2.1" or whatever. There is a timeline, and the technology is continuously advancing and so are user expectations. When you start trying to pre-package and force a bunch of features down peoples' throats rather than letting things develop organically, you are first going to end up with a lot of features nobody wants, and you are second going to face a backlash even against the features people do want. (This is the argument we're having at my company on a continuous basis - management's thing is always "what new features can we have that nobody's tried before and that'll look good in a press release?" And the old guard's reaction is always "let's try to actually give people what they want and do it reliably first".) The first internet bubble set the web world back probably 5 years, and this one's going to do the same thing.

"Web 2.0" as a concept has to be the product of marketing MBA's, which is a whole class of people that the world would probably be a better place without.

Re:Freaking sick of this

[nine-times]

I disagree. It's true that the term "web 2.0" gets thrown around a little too much, but it seems to me that it is an attempt to label real changes happening to the way people use the internet.

The first thing going on is that people are making web applications that actually work, without using dumb plugins. That's the cool thing about AJAX. It's not he fade-in and fade-out techniques; It's about Gmail and Basecamp. Real web applications that can load/save data in sensible ways, process the data without full-page refreshes every time, and show sensible transitions between tasks, without using something like Flash. It's just HTML, Javascript, XML, which is standard and open, meaning pretty much everyone can use it. No, the technology itself isn't new, but the technology is being used in new ways, which is notable.

And this development has been one of the things that seems to have lead to increased participation on the internet. Not so long ago, most people on the web were still passive observers. The Usenet and IRC networks were a place people could participate, but Joe Sixpack didn't really use them. The web itself was largely a place for companies to send a signal one-way. These days, however, there are web applications (sometimes using AJAX) which allow Joe Sixpack to be more participatory. You're seeing more weblogs, social networking, and media sharing sites, and this time non-geeks are getting in on the act.

So again, it's not so much about being a wholly new thing. If it were supposed to be a new thing, maybe they'd call it a new thing, instead of old-thing 2.0. It's just someone's attempt to take note of a rapid change of the sorts of services offered on the net, and a rapid shift in how web technologies are being used.

Re:Freaking sick of this

[Anonymous Coward]

The hype:
Web 1.0 + smoother graphics + AJAX = Web 2.0

Web 2.0 changlelog (last revision 1.0):
- Added XML and standards compliance to existing DHTML (AJAX)
- Added New artwork

The reality:
Does the difference warrant a 2.0 (as in, this is a new version/feature set)? No,
it's probably more of a 1.3. One bug fix and now with new artwork!

All I know is...

[abes]

The Web 2.0 revolution will not be televised!

Last I checked, Web 2.0 was AJAX, which was a way of making a medium that was originally mean to be static, less static. I feel it's more akin to compiling a bunch of photos into a flipbook rather than the actual creation of a TV.

Sure, javascript will do your dishes for you now, but it's not really anything new. I mean, back when javascript was livescript, or actionscript, or somethingscript, and Java was a seed planted in someone's head, there existed things call programs that could *still* communicate over the interweb. Did they do it over web page? No, but I'm still not sure why having it display in a web browser makes sense. Does the back button taken the place of undo? If I hit reload will my essay get better?

If you *really* want to credit apps in web pages, I think Java and M$ should get the prize. Java, with the whole language that could run an app anyhwere, and M$ with OLE/COM/DCOM/ActiveX/VirusCom. The whole excel spreadsheet in a web page, once again, didn't ever especially appeal to me. If I wanted to edit something on a remote server I would much rather: (a) access the remote file system with something like NFS, or (b) run the actual application remotely (ala X Window). And no, windows remote desktop is not the same.

So why the Web 2.0 crazyness? My suspicion is: (a) it's easy to start (though I would argue not to finish) an interface, (b) no need to compile anything, download anything, etc. (c) automatic file sharing (i.e. the whole internet thing again).

Java's success has been mixed. I don't think many people would argue that when it was first released, the press it received was overblown. The AWT, IMHO, leaves much to desire. While Swing did come along and resolve some of the issues, compare to a full featured toolkit like Cocoa, and I think it's still hard to compare. But it does provide one thing that no other toolkit does: a cross-platform app without major licensing issues or recompilation (I'm sure someone is going to complain that I fail to mention Tcl/Tk).

Google opening up their APIs to third party apps might actually for once and all start to solve these issues. You can access your data from any computer, you don't need to install anything (AJAX interface), but you can use a more sophisticated interface if needed.

Though I would love if someone actually made a cross-platform VM that had a GUI on the same level as Coca, but easily allowed any language to compile for it (yes, I know, you can compile any language for the Java VM with the GNU toolkit [e.g. gcj]).

As if the term web 2.0 wasn't useless enough...

[religious freak]

Sweet Jesus, I thought web 2.0 was a useless enough term... now it's being described as post-modern. What's next? Pics of Linus Torvalds in technicolor ala Andy Warhol? Maybe we could enter into a deconstructionist movement and port the entire 'net over to run on an Altair 8800?

Web 2.0 French Revolution of Technology ?

[unity100]

Are they kidding or are these people stupid ?

What you call web 2.0 is just a way of making client side do a little more work when serving web pages, and pretty widgets. Thats it.

Apparently to some metaphors and analogies are too cheap to spend them in that vulgar manner. French revolution - check out the immense exagerration here.

Web 2.0

[petrus4]

My own interpretation of "Web 2.0," (although I usually hate such buzzphrases) is that it describes a type of website which utilises what I could describe as "swarming collaboration." This is something very strikingly demonstrated by digg's Swarm visualisation.

To me this is the single main characteristic of sites described by that term, though...Sites that have completely peer to peer or submitted contact which is either exchanged or cross-pollinated between users at extremely high speeds. It's extremely group-oriented in nature...these sites are multi-user by definition; they can't exist with only one person using them at once, because they rely on users to provide the actual content.

Are they a good thing? For communication and collaborative problem solving, certainly...but there have been a number of times when browsing digg in particular, when I've developed a headache and have begun to feel severely overwhelmed...there is just *so much* data constantly flying around.

People have talked about digg being preferable to Slashdot, but I believe they both have their place. I can't cognitively tolerate digg for more than short periods; like I said, it's simply too much. Slashdot on the other hand allows me to pace the rate at which data comes to me; Articles are long enough that they can be read one at a time without there being more on the screen...and despite the idiotic "humour" which is present here at times, there is still a lot more substance and insight in the topics here than I've seen on digg so far.

Defining is not a prerequisite for understanding.

[ghastlygray]

If you cannot define something, you do not understand it. But feel free to claim that technologies are "post modern" because it masks the fact that you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Although this maybe applies to TFA, I beg to differ on your general point. There are plenty of words and concepts which you understand and use perfectly but are incapable of "defining". Words like "Ethics", "Justice", "Religion" and "Morals" are important in our language and in our everyday behavior, but most would be pressed if asked to "define" them. The early Socratic dialogues of Plato (in which such a definition for such concepts was sought in vain) only illustrate this point. The same goes for almost any philosophical movement, not just postmodernism. It's hard to define what "Hegelianism" or even "Logical Positivism" is. The case of postmodernism is special only because its disciples say upfront that they shun any definition of their occupation. But again, this does not mean they do nothing, say nothing, or mean nothing. It may be the case that they do, but you are in no position to judge, just because they shunned a holy "definition".

On the other hand, I do know one thinker who would agree with your exact wordings of the demand for definition, and that would be Leibniz. His ideal was indeed that every concept would have an exact, almost mathematical definition. When in dispute, we would simply say "let us calculate", and resolve any conflicts by analyzing the definitions of concepts. Which could have simplified a lot of Slashdot. But even Leibniz was more pragmatic than that in real life, you know.

Re-read

[brunes69]

There is a big difference between being against change and being against marketing buzzspeak.

If you read the authors comment (and most around those lines here), you will see what we hate is not the change, but the false labels associated to it.

WTF is "Web 2.0"? It's nothing. Everything going on today has been done before, its nothing new, it's just buzzwords.

People point to MySpace and YouTube, and I point to Geocities and Shoutcast. Only difference between the two is that we have more hardware and bandwidth today so we can deliver richer content (richer interface for developing personal pages, richer media - video vs. audio) - there is nothing *fundamentally* new or revolutionary about most of the web now compared to the web 5 years ago. Sure, there are some bright spots, like Google Maps/GMail/Flickr. But these things emerged gradually - some have been around in one form or another since the 90s. You can't just pick some point in time and go "Oh, it's web 2.0 now".

It's just marketspeak. And we hate marketspeak cause it is meaningless.