Monday, September 19, 2005

Web 2.0 is a bunch of crap

No, not the stuff arguably associated with it, just the term.

Look, people, the Internet is not some product evolving in big, whole-numbered discrete steps. The Web isn't like the release of Microsoft Office 10, followed by version 11.

No... technologies evolve and products improve bit by bit, formerly little-used tools get a new lease on life or are used in more creative ways, and so on. It's not like one day we wake up and *vavoom* there's a new Web online! And yes, I gather that the whole Web 2.0 thing is referring to "revolutionary" components, applications, but still I say, bah humbug. I love Gmail as much as the next guy, I think Meebo is pretty nifty... but sheesh... all this still doesn't, IMHO, warrant the whole "2.0" gushing.

I'm not surprised that e-business mags are trumpeting "Web 2.0." But I'm embarrassed that my fellow geeks are bloggily embracing it, too.

Please, for the love of 1's and 0's, can we go just one day without blabbing on about how some burgeoning transformation is going to create lasting peace, boost the world dotconomy, and help geeks get laid? I mean, maybe the first two, fine, but the third...? Only in Silicon Valley. Ah, only in Silicon Valley...

8 comments:

  1. spacer
    Mark JenSeptember 19, 2005 10:29 PM

    Hmm… is GMail really a Web 2.0 application? There’s no content syndication and no web services.

    From Wikipedia: “The site should not act as a ‘walled garden’ - it should be easy to get data in and out of the system” and “Users should own their own data on the site”. Doesn’t exactly sound like GMail to me :-p

    ReplyDelete
  2. spacer
    AdamSeptember 19, 2005 11:45 PM

    Ah, I shoulda wikipedia’d ;-).

    But return-nitpicking for a moment…

    Gmail has RSS feeds, which I’d assume for this purpose is the same as content syndication. 

    One can get data out via POP, but indeed, it’s not very easy… nor is it possible to get data out.

    Summary:  Not very bright of me to use Gmail as a Web 2.0 example!  But I stand by my general argument that the whole “Web 2.0” term is vaccuous hype (see www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/08/04/Web-2.0 from someone a lot smarter and high ranking than I am ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. spacer
    J.September 20, 2005 8:08 AM

    Curious wonder…is Mark related to Sandy?  She was my CS106a TA.

    ReplyDelete
  4. spacer
    Mark JenSeptember 20, 2005 5:35 PM

    Hi J, As far as we know, Sandy and I aren’t related, but we do share an uncommon last name :-)

    Maybe, we’re distant cousins…

    ReplyDelete
  5. spacer
    James MacAonghusSeptember 21, 2005 11:33 AM

    That’s too easy a criti

gipoco.com is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.