Social Computing and Badger's Paws

An anonymous reader writes "When Yahoo!'s Jeremy Zawodny recently asked What the heck is Web 2.0 anyway? he received a set of responses reminiscent of those garnered by The Register back in 2005, which famously concluded, based on its readers' responses, that Web 2.0 was made up of 12% badger's paws, 6% JavaScript worms, and 26% nothing. Nonetheless, as Social Computing (SoC) widens and deepens its footprint, another Jeremy — Jeremy Geelan — has asked if we are witnessing the death of 'Personal' Computing. SoC, Geelan notes, has already become an academic field of study. But perhaps Social Computing too is just badger's paws?"

Comments

web 2.0 is a buzz word

[timmarhy]

there is no technology called web 2.0, just mindless drones repeating it.

Re:We didn't even make the cut

[Wizarth]

Yes it is, as /. , north of the sea of memes, with a coast on the viral straights.

SoC

[tttonyyy]

SoC, Geelan notes, has already become an academic field of study. But perhaps Social Computing too is just badger's paws?" It certainly is, since SoC traditionally stands for System on Chip.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System-on-a-chip

Clearly "Social Computing" doesn't have much to do with, well... computing.

You mean Web 2.0 is just a buzzword?

[syousef]

The shock! The horror! Say it ain't so.

Web 2.0 = Web 1.0 + marketing - page refreshes + dynamic content

So yeah, just do a little animation on your screen without the page refreshes, then hand it over to the marketing department and you'll be riding that next wave in no time all the way to the bank.

Re:Uh, I'm sorry.

[geminidomino]

I think I echo GP when I say "Badger Paws? WTF?"

Your explaination doesn't exactly make it clearer. WTF does that have to do with badgers' paws?

Tim O'Reilly?

[Moraelin]

What about Tim O'Reilly? He seems to take the whole "Web 2.0" buzzword he invented pretty seriously. Plus, as repeating it goes, I assume that having a Web 2.0 Summit (the next one is in October) would kinda qualify as repeating it.

Then again, he generally seems to take himself too seriously. What with the attempt to regulate blogosphere and all.

He's not the only one, though, since it wouldn't be much of a summit if only he was going there. There are a lot of people pining for the good ol' days of the 1.0 Bubble, and wanting to once again get big VC money for just having a web page and a sock puppet. Bubble 2.0 if you will. Cue trying to tell investors and each other that this time they're Web 2.0, see. Not the old failed Bubble 1.0, see. This time they have javascript and wikis and blogs and BitTorrent and whatnot, and a shiny happy everyone-participates model. _This_ time you'll get your money worth if you invest in them. Would they lie to you... again?

(And if that sounds stupid and made up, sadly it isn't made up. That's what makes Web 2.0 in Tim O'Reilly's own view and definition of it. See, it's 2.0, because now it has wikis, and blogs, and participation, and Google search, etc. And this time there's search engine optimization too, btw! And that all's _the_ recipe for not going bankrupt as a VC capital sink!)

Oh, wait... you meant perchance that nobody _sane_ is repeating it? Ok, in that case no objection.

Re:What's the other 56%?

[KDR_11k]

Marketing. Which is actually the total opposite of Dark Matter, you don't want to see it but it's highly visible and it has zero weight behind it.

Not exactly, but close

[Moraelin]

Generally you got the right idea, but it's not just about marketting and not just dynamic content as such. If you read Tim O'Reilly's own explanations of it, since he invented and pushes the buzzword, it's more about techno-fetishism and the deep seated belief that a million monkeys on keyboards _can_ write Hamlet... if only they're on the Internet and have all the latest buzzwords.

E.g., he sees personal web pages as soo Web 1.0, and replaced by wikis in Web 2.0. No, really.

I mean, seriously, it's sooo pase to just have your own resume on your own homepage. Make it a wiki so everyone can edit it! Surely reality works by consensus, and a million bored strangers who never heard of you before are more qualified than you to fill that content! Or, bah, corporate web sites are so dull. Make it a wiki, so random strangers can spice it up. (That was sarcasm, btw.)

E.g., ditto for sources of information. Having an authoritative source is soo Web 1.0, when you could just have a wiki instead. Wikis are the Web 2.0 way! And I don't even mean the sane way of using, say, Wikipedia as a starting point and following the links to the authoritative sources. No, no, no. He sees wikis as the _replacement_.

E.g., publishing content is soo Web 1.0. You should have everyone participate! Participation is the Web 2.0 way, don't you know?

So, yeah, forget about writing your own press releases and product manuals and FAQs. Let the community participate! Let perfect strangers and competitors spice it up. Imagine the possibilities! Imagine the excitement of checking each day to find out what perversions someone added to your company or product info! (Yep, you guessed, sarcasm.)

E.g., buying servers (e.g., from Akamai) to distribute your patches and executables is soo web 1.0. The Web 2.0 way is BitTorrent. Get on with the times.

I mean, hey, look at how excited WoW players were to get their ADSL's _outbound_ pipe stuffed up by a modified BitTorrent to download the patches. Not to mention at times being stuck with sucking a huge patch through a straw, from 1-2 other people's outbound pipe. Surely they'd barf if they could download the same patch in 5 minutes from a dedicated server without the hassle. (Sarcasm too, btw. It was actually a major gripe about WoW. See, for example, the Penny Arcade strip.)

Etc.

Now don't get me wrong, I can see some point in some of that stuff if it's an extra. Providing a forum for the users is pretty much expected anyway, and offering a torrent in _addition_ to the plain old download can't hurt at least. But presenting it as the _replacement_ to the boring old Web 1.0 stuff is... brain dead. It takes an unhealthy dose of techno-fetishism and techno-utopianism to see everything solvable by just more network buzzwords and a million networked monkeys writing reality by consensus.

It does fit with his other brain-damaged ideas, though, such as the call for censoring and regulating the blogosphere. The guy genuinely seems _that_ convinced that he can forge a whole utopian society on the Internet.

Re:Not exactly, but close

[Moraelin]

_If_ you're giving away your work for free, ok, none of us has any expectations as to how. Whatever works for you, really.

The problem is that Tim O'Reily sees BitTorrent as a successor not to Sourceforge, but to Akamai. Which is distributed servers for large companies. We're talking the likes of MS, Yahoo, Symantec, AOL, etc. I don't think many people bought Akamai hosting for some small freeware utility they wrote.

And it's positioning it _there_ that makes me have a trouble with it. If I paid a ton of money for, say, Vista, the keywords are: paid money. We're not talking some free content. I think the least they can do is give me the patches in a fast and convenient way. I _don't_ want to use my outbound pipe, and having it stuffed, to participate in sharing MS's patches. MS can just keep paying for some civilized hosting, thank you very much.

That's really why I used the WoW patches as an example, because it's just what irks me. I'm paying a ton of money, and they can't even host their own freaking patches. It's not freeware and, frankly, I _don't_ think I have any obligation to chip in a little to help Blizzard's bottom line some more.

And if that kind of crap is (part of) what Web 2.0 is all about, then: no, thanks.

That, in a nutshell is all that bothers me about that part of the Web 2.0 concept.