What I Thought of Web 2.0

Sunday, January 15, 2023

In grad school I took a knowledge management foundations class that I really liked. Each week we had to post these “blog points” and then we’d read each other’s posts and comment on them and get our participation points for the week. You know, as you do.

Today I came across this one blog point I’d written for that class. It’s living as a writing sample in my portfolio on my (now rather stale) website, librarymatthew.com.

Our assignment for the week was to reflect on Web 2.0 technologies and knowledge management. As usual, I waited until the end of the week to write mine, which in this case ended up being on the same day as the Paris attacks.

Here’s what I wrote.

Posted by Matthew on Friday, November 13, 2015 9:33:39 PM

I don't know how to write this blog point. So I'm just going to write, and I'll write as honestly and openly as I can. I was going to write about how I gave a presentation on Web 2.0 in my Foundations of Library and Information Science class in 2013. I was going to post screenshots from the Halloween-themed presentation as my visual element. None of that seems very relevant right now.

I'm sitting in my cozy home, next to my cozy cat, looking at my cozy computer. My Twitter feed is full of news, condolences, hope, tragedy, political nonsense, pain, and sponsored posts someone planned at a marketing meeting days or weeks or months ago.

We're supposed to write this week about Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is happening right now, and it's horrifying, and mesmerizing, and enough to make my stomach turn. 

Earlier tonight I was at a car dealership signing paperwork. They had a TV on in the waiting room playing some dumb sitcom. I pulled out my phone, tapped on Twitter, and started seeing the news. Attacks, shootings, bombings, terrorism. It was disorienting to hear canned laugher on the TV and see advertising in between posts about an unfolding international travesty with a growing death toll. It was disorienting to watch a little bit of the world end. It was painful to watch people's worlds end.

Web 2.0 is community. That's what's making it possible. All the glorious and complicated humanity of the people make Web 2.0 possible. Our textbook says Ajax technology enables Web 2.0. I say the people enable Web 2.0, and we're seeing it all in action right now. I don't mean that in a voyeuristic way, although I feel like a voyeur. Or a vulture. I don't know what I feel, actually. Helpless. Guilty. Informed. Insignificant. 

Why is Web 2.0 important? Because it can bring communities together. It's bringing us together tonight. Web 2.0 broke the news, and now the community - the global community - I hope, will band together. I hope that's what's next. Web 2.0 will enable families to find each other. To grieve their losses. To rebuild their futures. Because of Web 2.0, people will be able to get help from crowdsourced fund raisers and peoplefinders. It's never been such a wonderful and terrifying time to be alive than right now. It's more than collective intelligence. It's collective community. 

I know this is supposed to be a textbook response and analysis of Web 2.0, and what's next for Web 3.0 (personalization, intelligent search, etc.). In some ways, that just doesn't seem so significant right now. In other ways, it seems like one of the most important things we could be discussing this week. 

My thoughts, as insignificant as they may be, are going out to everyone impacted by the Paris attacks. I hope that our global community finds peace. Technology and Web 2.0 can certainly play a role in that.