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November 13 Web 2.0: The Blind Technology RushIf you ever read Brian Kelly's excellent UK Web Focus blog, you will often come across comments by myself. Almost always, I am taking the role of the grumpy naysayer, attacking many of the notions of Web 2.0, as presented enthusiastically by Brian.
The funny thing is, as Web 2.0 technologies go, I am a keen and long time user of the sort of tools which people lump under the category - I have been regularly contributing to wikis since 2002, had a blog since 2004, have a page on Facebook which is a significant part of my social life, have messed around with a lot of mash-ups (such as the mapping posts I made on this blog) and use countless services which are regarded as Web 2.0. So why grumpy?
Well, let's go through the services I use. I started to contribute to our wiki at work because we decided in our organisation that this was the best way to flexibly disseminate and update information for those people who needed across a very devolved structure. I started my blog in 2004 primarily as a development diary for those people who were interested in or using FirefoxADM. I got a page on Facebook because I was out at the pub and at parties and friends and, more importantly, good looking girls were asking that question "do you have Facebook?". Saying no was a bad answer... Even the stuff I did for the mashups was my attempt to see if I could produce a better version of the mapping site the University of Edinburgh used. Every Web 2.0 technology I use is used because I had a reason to use it.
The fact is every time you choose any technology first and then try to figure out a reason to use it, it does not work. This is not just with Web 2.0 technologies, but ANY technology - people don't go to DIY shops and buy hammers and then get home and then figure out what things they can hammer, they have a problem in their home and go out and buy the right tools for the job.
Yet, it is all too common with Web 2.0 technologies that people are encouraged to adopt them without this reasoning in place, and often when there is a reason it is the circular argument of "because its Web 2.0"! The granddaddy of these is the blog. People, teams, organisations are told "you should blog" and they are encouraged and encouraged to set one up. The problem is, all too often, they have nothing to say. So, they get told they should blog at a Web 2.0 conference and get back to work the next day and enthusiastically go to Wordpress or Blogspot and set one up, and start off with a "hello world, this is my blog" post. Then a day or so later, a real post of meaning, something they are getting off their chest. Then, time passes, maybe a third post a week later and then one or two more sporadic posts and the blog dies. Even worse are those organisations who indoctrinate their blog into their policy when they have no reason to blog. Libraries are particularly bad for this, having had it rammed down their throats that they must blog and wiki and use all these other Web 2.0 tools to be "Library 2.0". These librarians often have no reason to blog than the FUD of "you'll be left behind as Library 1.0!", so library blogs are forcibly created. Unfortunately, because they have nothing really interesting to say on them, they become full of nothing more than the same content that used to live under the news link on the library's home page.
Interestingly, also on Brian's blog, he points to an library-targetted OCLC report he contributed to on the use of these sort of technologies. Some of the quotes are quite interesting:
Very interesting. I wonder if we are now starting to see a maturity of Web 2.0 as people move away from a belief they have to implement certain specific Web 2.0 technologies and actually start to think of how and which ones can be used to be a worthwhile contribution to the services people use and run.
Its got to be better than it is now... Comments (12)
Mark Sammons
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