10-21-2006, 09:00 AM
Quote:Web 2.0, Search 2.0, Life 2.0, World 2.0. The metaphor of software versions to describe technological and social phenomena once upon a time was clever. But as with all clever sayings, it became overused and is now cliché. The draw toward terms like Web 2.0 is of course that it makes a strong implication that what it represents is a next generation of something good enough to have gotten a second run. The trouble with such monikers, though, is their post-modern tendency to merely be what came after.
Enlightenment thinking was clear and organized. There were disagreements amongst the thinkers of the Era, but the Era itself was definable. Post-modernism cannot be defined except by saying what it is not. It is not modern; it is what came after the Enlightenment. Web 2.0 suffers from the same malaise. People across the globe are publishing countless articles and books to try to define Web 2.0, but like its underpinning philosophy, it is not easily defined. In fact, to put it into a box would be to contradict its very nature...
full article: http://web2journal.com/read/287755.htm