Snapshot: What is the “participative web”?
One of the easiest ways to pick out a fast-moving and dynamic area of activity is to watch the number of buzzwords that come shooting out of people’s interactions.
And for the past five years, the Internet has been the undisputed king of buzzwords for the simple reason that new products and services continue to come along every day that cannot be easily fitted within previous boxes.
Many of these terms are coined by people trying to find parameters to discuss exciting new developments or get across a novel philosophy or movement in a simple phrase. In this case the “participative web” fits with the first description – providing a useful envelope for discussions.
And this participative web is in large part thanks to one of the most recent buzzwords – Web 2.0. There are countless description of what Web 2.0 actually is – here is my explanation:
The first era of the Internet was all about getting people online and getting them to not only access the information there but also post their own information, adding to the global repository. That effort proved so enormously successful that pretty soon it became impossible to locate the information you want. In part this was solved by search engines – most notably the company du jour, Google – but even with search engines, it remains difficult to pull out the information you want from this vast global mesh (mess) of data.
Web 2.0 covers the technologies, tools and companies that try to make sense of this information for the individual by allowing you to define where you want to take your information from. The most successful of these efforts mirror our real-world approach to gathering information – we listen to individuals’ whose opinions we trust. And so Web 2.0 tends to allow individuals to share information with other defined individuals, who act as a huge and focused filter and so enable you to get on with your life.
This sharing of information between individuals is having enormous and sometimes unforeseen changes. Individuals are able to simply locate and then extensively communicate with those of a like mind – whether they live next door or on the other side of the world.
New technologies that allow Internet users to rate content, to work with one another and to share information at the click of a button have enormous social, business, scientific and political implications. Many manifestations such as Wikipedia or open-source software still appear to defy what we would regard as societal norms. The ability for people to make photos or videos instantly available to anyone in the world within minutes or their having been taken is something that continues to boggle minds.
Knowledge is powerInformation has become infinitely more varied and more readily accessible. And if the information you provide is not as easily accessed as someone else’s, it is their information that people will read and act on. But with the huge pluses comes equally large problems: illegal content, disrupted industries, piracy, slander and libel.
What role can governments play in protecting – even promoting – the positive aspects of this global participation? While at the same time, what can be done to reduce, restrict, even remove the elements that we as a society deem damaging?
It’s a complex subject and this conference will begin to delve into it in order to find possible threads of agreement on the best way forward.
Other snapshots: