Web 2.0 (3.0…) After the thrill is gone Howard Rosenbaum [email protected] May 15, 2008.

Web 2.0 (3.0…) After the thrill is gone

Howard [email protected]

May 15, 2008

Rosenbaum: Web 2.0 (3.0…): After the thrill is goneSchool of Library and Information Science @ Indiana University

Web 2.0: After the thrill is gone

I. About Web 2.0, 3.0

• Origins

II. Using social informatics

• Web 2.0 is a computerization movement

III. A critical view

• Determinism, utopianism, capitalism, power and control

IV. After the thrill is gone

• What’s left? Is it useful?



pages.usherbrooke.ca/ncliche/wordpress/

You are here


pages.usherbrooke.ca/ncliche/wordpress/wp-content/web20301.jpg


What is Web 2.0?

It was originally a marketing term introduced by Tim O’Reilly and Dale Daugherty in 2004 as

“a useful, if imperfect, conceptual umbrella under which analysts, marketers and other stakeholders in the tech field could huddle the new generation of internet applications and businesses that were emerging to form the ‘participatory Web’”

Madden and Fox (2006). Riding the waves of ‘Web 2.0.’ Pew Internet Life Project.



hinchcliffe.org/img/web2tree.jpg


MIS 3.0


Web 2.0 is described as

A new “user-driven” approach to to using the web

A category of new technologies

A company that is taking advantage of the first two characteristics

The focus: providing services rather than products

The services tend are built around concepts of community and collaboration

The goal: active and involved people using the service



So, in a sense, Web 2.0 looks a lot like this

Some Web 2.0 companies

ru3.com/luc/uploaded_images/web2-big-745097.jpg



Web 2.0 companies share other characteristics

Harnessing the collective intelligence and taking advantage of network effects

Google: the link structure of the web

Amazon: our reviews of their products

Ebay: our willingness to engage in commerce

Flikr and de.li.cious: our ability to classify artifacts

Wikipedia: our desire to exchange knowledge



And the discussion has already begun about Web 3.0

“You don't have to be a computer scientist to create a program. We are seeing that manifest in Web 2.0 and 3.0 will be a great extension of that, a true communal medium…the distinction between professional, semi-professional and consumers will get blurred, creating a network effect of business and applications.”

Jerry Yang (2006)techluver.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/jerry-yang-yahoo-co-founder.JPG



And

“Web 3.0 will ultimately be seen as applications which are pieced together. There are a number of characteristics: [they] are relatively small, the data is in the cloud, applications can run on any device … [they] are very fast and very customizable. Furthermore, [they] are distributed virally: literally by social networks, by email. You won't go to the store and purchase them…

That's a very different application model than we've ever seen in computing.”

Eric Schmidt



“Don’t be surprised if Web 2.0 also turns out to be just a staging post on the way to a much more mature and durable Web 3.0 era

Web 3.0 [is] going to deliver a new generation of business applications that will see business computing converge on the same fundamental on-demand architecture as consumer applications. So this is not something that’s of merely passing interest to those who work in enterprise IT. It will radically change the organizations where they work and their own career paths.”

Phil Wainewrightblogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=68




www.digitalrhetoric.org/course/web1to3.jpg


From PC Magazine: An Idiot's Guide to Web 3.0

The semantic web: machines read sites as easily as we do (almost)

Your agent checks your schedule against those of doctors in a 10-mile radius and makes an appointment

The 3D web: you can walk through

Without leaving your desk, you go house hunting across town or take a tour of Europe

www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2102863,00.asp



And

The media-centric web: finding media using other media

Enter a photo of a painting and your agent retrieves similar paintings

The pervasive web: it's on your PC, cell phone, clothes and jewelry

The bedroom windows are online, checking the weather, so they know when to open and close

img.alibaba.com/photo/10863374/LG_Internet_Refrigerator_GR_D267DTU.jpg



Whether Web 2.0 or 3.0, many are sure that it is disruptive and requires change

Internal reorganization

A fundamental change in mission

A fundamental change in handling authority

Technological agility

It challenges orthodoxy on almost every level

It requires a radical change in the way educators and IT people workfarm3.static.flickr.com/2243/1757901166_10d08b82dc.jpg




www.hetemeel.com/einsteinform.php


~or~

So … Web 2.0, 3.0…

What do you think?





• Origins








A computerization movement is a social movement

A “collective enterprise to establish a new order of life”

“[It] … takes on the character of a society. It acquires organization and form, a body of customs andtraditions, established leadership, an enduring division

of labor, social rules and social values – in short, a culture, and a new scheme of life”

Blumer (1951; 8)



Components of a CM:

A core ICT or ICTs

Organizational structures: CM organizations

Collective action

Public discourse; technological framing

Ideology and myths: revolutionary and reform

Organizational and use practices

Historical trajectory



They involve a

“Struggle over the production and counter-production of ideas and meanings” that define the core ICT

Iacono and Kling (1998; 6)

They follow different paths

To persist, they require organizational structures that allow people to engage in collective action:

“They can raise money, mobilize resources, hold meetings and formulate positions” (Iacono and Kling, 1995; 5)




As a CM, Web 2.0 depends on social actors and groups whose collective actions shape and propel it

Activists, professional associations, vendors, technology writers, journalists, academics, policy makers, administrators, front-line people

It originated in a time and place, is gathering momentum, and will follow one of several paths

It has an ideology of revolution or reform based on a deeply held belief that Web 2.0 apps can cause fundamental positive social change


hinchcliffe.org/img/web2tough.jpg



Web 2.0 has a technological frame that contains socially constructed meanings ascribed to specific technologies

It connects relevant actors and the particular ways in which they understand a technology as ‘working’(Iacono and Kling, 1998; 6)

Framing “describes the actions and interactions of actors, explaining how they socially construct a technology” (Bijker, 2001:15526)



While the frame is developing, the ICT that is its focus is interpretively flexible

Over time the frame is built up in professional and public discourse and fixes (relatively), the meaning of the core technologies

It shapes public discourse and perceptions and simplifies complex information for externalaudiences

Technological frames and the public discourse may actually “misrepresent actual practice for long periods of time” (Iacono and Kling, 1998; 8)



• Origins










www.says-it.com/badge/sheriff.php



“From Love 2.0 to copyright, law, business, and even authorship, the versioning virus has infected many writers ... To this day the definition of Web 2.0 is vague at best and those who claim novelty for the technologies associated with the phrase, are wrong”

Scholz, T. (2008).www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2138/1945



The business of Web 2.0

A business model that uses the net to put people and data together in meaningful exchanges

Companies provide free and attractive services to users who are an audience for advertisers who provide the revenues for the companies

Services and activities create media consumers who are more engaged and active participants in the key business of the net

Creating, maintaining and sharing content


The ideology of Web 2.0

Revolutionary technical innovation and social empowerment

Freedom of choice through an architecture of participation

Empowering the individual, encouraging creativity, democratizing media production, celebrating the power of collaboration and social networks

Use Web 2.0 to organize and share information, to interact in communities, and to express ourselves




The framing of Web 2.0 reflects “triumphalism of Web 2.0 proponents”

Leads to technological determinism

“Technology as semiautonomous, monolithic, discrete, and ahistorical” Scott. (2007) Bubble 2.0: Online Organized Critique of Web 2.0

“Surrounded by the wondrous effects of machines, we are encouraged to ignore the ideas embedded in them which means we become blind to the ideological meaning of our technologies” Neil Postman Technopoly



Technological determinism underlies a lot of vendor and evangelist discourse

Leads to a rush to acquire and implement tools

Especially if open source

Entranced by shiny things

How can we use these technologies?

Not: how will these technologies help meet needs or improve services

What are the costs of the implementation and use of Web 2.0 technologies?


www.deitel.com/Portals/0/textcloud_fullsize.jpg

Here are some of those bright and shiny things




Also leads to technological utopianism

The transformative power of technology brings about positive social change

Often accompanied by an assumption that this is inevitable

Web 2.0 as involving “collaborative uses of technologies” with “participatory, egalitarian, and democratic potential”

Educational institutions can remain relevant by empowering students who will shape the institution

Scott (2007)



Reality: the technologies and communities underlying Web 2.0 existed long before O’Reilly coined the term

Berners–Lee’s original vision was of a collaborative workspace where everything was linked in a single, global information space in which everyone would be able to edit

The editing capability did not make it to the show

We thought of the Web as a medium where a small number published and most browsed

Web 2.0 may be nothing more than a return to the original vision



Reality: we accept a market ideology of crowdsourcing

Collective intelligence shifts the creation and sharing of content from a centralized source to the crowd

It enables control and use of user–generated content by private sector corporations

Exploiting free labor to gain profit from networked social production

Platforms for participation (blogging) and for user generated content (YouTube) are architectures of exploitation from which Web 2.0 companies profit



And another thing…

Web 2.0 participants operate in an “attention economy”

Information consumes attention so a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention (Simon)

A “fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the many and the concentration of the economic rewards into the hands of the few”

Nicholas Carrmedia.urbandictionary.com/image/large/adhd-18223.jpg



Web 2.0 participants seem to be happy because of their interest in pursuing self-expression or socializing and do not seem interested in making money

It is clear that the economic value of each individual contribution (blog entry…) is trivial

However, when these activities are aggregated on a web-wide scale the business becomes lucrative

They operate happily in an attention economy while the owners of the services operate happily in a cash economy



The attention economy does not operate separately from the cash economy

It is simply a means of creating cheap Iinputs for the cash economy

As educators rush to implement 2.0 technologies, the effect is to broaden the base of the attention economy

The unintended effect is to increase the flow of capital to the owners of these means of production

Educator 2.0 - the capitalist tool!www.quarterman.com/images/learnenglish-central-stories-animal-farm-330x220.gif


Reality: By offering Web 2.0 services, search providers can increasingly track users’ social and intellectual activities

They add personal information flows to their databases to leverage for personalized services and advertising

Users of search engines are identified, assessed and classified to coordinate and control access to goods and services

O’Reilly said in 2005 that the race is on to own certain classes of core data: location, identity, calendaring of public events, product identifiers and namespaces



We generate enormous amounts of content that is stored in central services owned by US companies

It is unclear who has ultimate responsibility for archiving this content raising considerable legal issues

Many don’t mind sharing their personal data streams companies that mine the data for fun and profit

This creates a situation where the claimed benefits are accompanied by the emergence of an infrastructure of “dataveillance”

This can become the basis of disciplinary social control




The version of privacy embedded in Web 2.0 is shaped by the exhibitionism of information sharing behaviors

The goal is to see and be seen, to have the most friends by sharing personal information

Boundaries between public and private are blurred

This blurring is shaped and supported by Web 2.0 technologies

This has negative impacts on conceptions of privacy, changes the nature of digital personal space and redefines the distinction between front and back stage



The version of privacy embedded in the institutional relationship between schools and students is different

Student privacy is paramount

Students’ educational activities are personal, private and protected

This approach to privacy is central to principles of intellectual freedom

The technologies and ideologies of Web 2.0, imported uncritically into educational institutions pose a threat to this concept of privacy



Critical comments can be divided into those dealing with IT, pedagogy, and society

IT: There is considerable risk in committing institutional resources to building a sustainable infrastructure with proprietary tools

Web 2.0 applications tend to have a short lifespan

Kids have have a staleness detector and will quickly move to the next thing

The movement of data into the cloud may make course management systems obsolete

Are these tools free as in kittens or free as in beer?



Pedagogy: There will be unintended consequences of computing in the cloud (data moves off the desktop)

Who owns and can access the data?

If collaboration is a root metaphor of Web 2.0 (Milliron), the individualist metaphor at the root of much of educational practice is bankrupt

The individual learner is at odds with the deep sociality of Web 2.0

Companies outsource problem solving (Netflix, InnoCentive)

How will this affect student work?



Pedagogy: Web 2.0 makes it difficult to maintain quality and authority at a distance

What types of assignments do we need to achieve learning objectives in this environment?

Networks effects are not present in educational organizations

If the quality of the service and the content depends on the number of users and densely interlinked sites, then we have a problem

The educational user base, even in the largest classes cannot compare to the user base on the Web



Social: Web 2.0 is a disruptive computerization movement that is undermining contemporary education

What happens if we succeed in making time and place irrelevant in the delivery of education?

What is the future of the classroom?

How will it change the practices of administrators, IT support people, instructional designers, teachers?

What is the future of land based colleges and universities?



• Origins










What’s left is useful

Information goes from private devices into the network

It can be accessed from mobile and desktop interfaces anytime and anywhere

What are the implications of this expansion of the public domain for education?

There is a range of interesting tools

How can they be used to improve services?

How can they be used make the student experience more engaging?


There is clearly online collaboration and sharing

People taking shared responsibility for publishing terabytes of knowledge about themselves, the network, and their worlds

Observing others, expanding the network, making “friends”, editing and updating content, blogging, remixing, sharing, responding, exhibiting, tagging…

Do these represent new information behaviors and needs?

How we respond?



Pedagogy

We need to educate students and ourselves about

Ownership and uses of data and information

The intricacies of copyright and the protection of IP

Current conception of privacy

The intended and untended consequences of technology

The ethics of this new information environment

The economics of this new socio-technical environment



Research attention

How Web 2.0 discourse is shaped and maintained

The impact on organizational structure and culture

How it is changing pedagogical practice (including support)

The formation of new hierarchies and social divisions

The problems and subversions afforded by the collaborative culture

Understanding patterns of social participation

The creation of new elites



geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/images/2007/08/08/web801.jpg

Web 6.0- get ready!



Allen, M. (2008). Web 2.0: An argument against convergence. First Monday 13(3). http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2139/1946

Anderson, P. (2008). What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education. JISC Technology & Standards Watch http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf

Beer, D. and Burrows, R. (2007). Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: Some Initial Considerations Sociological Research Online, Volume 12, Issue 5 http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/5/17.html

O’Reilly, T. (2007) What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. Communications & Strategies, No. 1, p. 17.

Scholz, T. (2008). Market Ideology and the Myths of Web 2.0. First Monday 13(3). http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2138/1945

Petersen, S.M. (2008). Loser Generated Content: From Participation to Exploitation. First Monday 13(3). http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2141/1948

Selwyn, N. (2008). Web 2.0 applications as alternative environments for informal learning - a critical review. OECD-KERIS http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/32/3/39458556.pdf

Zimmer, M. (2008). Preface: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0. First Monday 13(3). http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2137/1943

Zimmer, M. (2008). The Externalities of Search 2.0: The Emerging Privacy Threats when the Drive for the Perfect Search Engine meets Web 2.0. First Monday 13(3). http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2136/1944


Web 2.0 (3.0…) After the Thrill is Gone

Howard [email protected]

May 15, 2008

www.slis.indiana.edu/hrosenba/www/pres/fsi_08/fsi_08.htm

Web 2.0 (3.0…) After the thrill is gone Howard Rosenbaum [email protected] May 15, 2008.

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