by Bill Ives
August 7, 2007 at 5:46 pm
· Filed under Enterprise 2.0
Ron Paterson has joined this blog to help us look at What are the underlying questions in our lives that Social Software may solve? Fred Fortin raises an interesting question in the spirit of Rob’s goal in his World Health Care Blog:
“How can we combine the community values, social networking, and collective intelligence and information gathering of the wiki enterprise, with the critical science, professional competence and amplifying effect of expert systems, (take a deep breath) with the bold attempts to break down archaic or self-serving legal and political barriers to information the public needs — as symbolized possibly by the ‘Free Culture’ movement — in order to bring health care to the poor and rural populations in Asia or anywhere else for that matter?”
One example, that I had a chance to participate in a minor way was the Katrina People Finder Project Sponsored by Harvard’s Berkman Center. In this case a wiki was used to help organize the various siloed databases that had sprung up after the disaster. A few dedicated smart people were able to do in a few days what the government had been unable to do in a several years, set up a unified site for people to find their missing family and friends and post message for who they were looking for. The spirit and power of collaboration that bypasses political lines was evident here. One newspaper that was embedded in the old school thinking at first talked about suing the effort when it added their missing person files to the growing database. They soon released the folly of this objection as free legal advocates were eager to take them on. There were many other web-based efforts after Katrina that made up, in part, for the tangled up mess and inaction that the government is still engaged in over this disaster. Thanks to Fred for raising this issue.
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A fine example of what the web can do. But Web2 ? It is the kind of thing those pof us who used networks were doing before the term World Wide Web hadf been coined.
The web would be a lot better without the army of people who are running round inventing new names for things that are old, ordinary and mundane.
Had people been given the time and support to learn to use Web1 they would understand Web2 is a piece of geek mythology.
But Ian, it isn’t mythology. You said yourself that Web 2.0 is just a new name for an old thing? That’s not a myth, it’s “rebranding”.
The reason Bill’s story sets a fine example is because people are using it. It has everything to do with the penetration of engagement. When we brand anything — a thought or a product — we are teaching. We change the name of that thing in order to explain it in terms the unknowing can understand.
When the InfoWorld guy placed a coupler on a pay phone receiver a few years back, sending data back to people from multiple locations, someone said hey, people have been moving data across phone lines for years, that’s not new. Today we call it a mobile lifestyle.
Branding is an art, an art that moves people. Web 2.0 is a quirky way of saying, come in the pool, the water is fine. The Internet is easier now, we’ve knocked some bugs out and there’s more in it for you now.
I believe everything we do in life is a metaphor, another word or way, to describe something that already exists.
For what something, is the real mind bender.
Lisa Padilla
http://www.lisacast.com
Lisa
You provided an excellent commnet. Fats Domino used to say thet rock and roll was just a new marketing strategy for rythmn and blues. In a away it was and Fats did not really change his style but the new marketing strategy opnned up a lot of new uses and a bigger audience. I am not completely happy with the term web 2.0 but it has beocme the common brand so we use it And it is different. In the original web you could have individuals share ocntent but they generally did not do it. Now the majority of content comes from indiviudals. This participation is just one of the changes but perhaps the most significant. Thanks, Bill
For me 2.0 is a useful rebrand and it also points to a metaphor.
It’s more than interactive and two way – revolutionary compared to 1.0 and a return to something old – “Conversation”.
But most of the tools are free or cheap and hence can be used by those who traditionally have no money. They also use a vernacular language and so regular folks are no longer dependent on the “Priest” of IT to “help/Control” them. My NGO clients are stunned by the fact that they don’t need to be the servant of a techhie any more.
This is radically different from 1.0 and while it has a lot of tech babble – 2.0 is very democratizing – it is pushing power out. This is why I think that it will change the world as the press did in the 16th century
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