Web 2.0 Maven, John Battelle
Web 2.0 — In an upcoming PC Magazine I have a rather bland (compared to this essay by Keen) essay on Web 2.0. I tend to think it’s just old wine in new bottles. This essay is far more interesting and mean spirited. I’m jealous. None of this chatter will make any difference in the long run as we can expect to see a new bubble emerge in the years ahead. And it will be based on the nonsense within the Web 2.0 buzz-words. As they used to say on the Google Finance TV show, “Have fun! Make money!”
If you democratize media, then you end up democratizing talent. The unintended consequence of all this democratization, to misquote Web 2.0 apologist Thomas Friedman, is cultural “flattening.” No more Hitchcocks, Bonos, or Sebalds. Just the flat noise of opinion–Socrates’s nightmare.
Have no fear, the cream will always rise to the top.
Throughout all of history, the vast majority of people in this world had little time (or freedom or technology) to express their opinions or pursue creative/culture endeavors. The fact that modern technology has moved billions of people from an agrarian/survival type of life to one where for the first time, is GREAT, and the outcome will be more great works of thinking and art, with more people able to enjoy it.
There is an argument to be made that it will get harder to separate the wheat from the chaff, but consensus(es) will emerge.
To use the example of Mozart, I for one would rather everyone in the world be given a piano at the age of three than just the small percentage of the population was in Mozart’s time. I know deep down that amazing things will come from it.
Feh. Who says it’s going to replace big media? As long as there’s a market for big blockbuster movies, there will be people making them. As for people just getting their own opinions thrown back at them, you can’t do that already? If you’re conservative, you can watch Fox News, listen to AM radio, and choose which newspapers to read. The Washington Times instead of the Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal instead of the New York Times, etc etc etc.
The “democratization” of media, which, yeah, is kind of just a buzzword, is good in that some people may bubble up from it that may not have otherwise. In blogging, you have thousands and thousands of blogs written by individuals but only read by a small handful of people: their existing friends and maybe a few online “friends” they’ve never met and probably never will. Yet there are others who found an audience, became big, and are now breaking into the traditional media because of it. The top political bloggers meet with politicians, publish books, and appear on television. They’re still not exactly heavyweights but at least they’re in the game.
His problem is that he sees it blowing away traditional media, leaving us with endless waves of low-budget crap. Traditional media isn’t going anywhere, it’s just shrinking a bit due to no longer being the only game in town. “Citizen” media fills in the gaps and niches that aren’t big enough for the big boys to target. After all, didn’t somebody on TWiT say TechTV was a bit too niche to survive as its own channel? And yet TWiT succeeds in the smaller “democratized” market because the niche does exist.
The other concern is that it leaves no common ground for culture because no two people are watching the same thing. You can’t start a conversation with a random person in this idea of the future because you can’t assume they’ve seen anything you have. First this is bunk because traditional media isn’t going anywhere, so there’s plenty of room for the next Bono. And second it just creates a different avenue for conversation as you turn each other on to all the different things you’re following. The “viral” thing, to use another buzzword. If you have a common interest, the result of that conversation will be a lot more satisfying than the banal small talk we’re used to. You yourself have said that one of the great things about Napster was finding someone with similar tastes to yours and then going through their collection and discovering amazing things you never heard of before. Same thing.
This is just the whine that happens whenever the culture shifts a little. The internet was going to make us all socially disconnected loners. Didn’t happen. People whine that the iPods and portable video devices disconnect us from the world around us. When, on the subway? Maybe it’s a Northeastern thing, but I’ve rarely if ever seen two strangers strike up a real conversation on the train or the subway. I’m just making my commute a little better for me, I’m not missing anything. I don’t use these things when I would normally be interacting with people.
If the people pushing these things think they’re going to revolutionize everything and destroy the old media companies, yeah, they’re full of it. But it is going to have some effect, just the way the internet did and continues to do even after the bubble burst.
what he said.
I agree with Lou. If I wasn’t thoroughly bored by petit-bourgeois twits back in the era of Marcuse [why even remind anyone of Marcuse?], I suppose I could be provoked into responding to some of this crap.
It’s easy to see what should be criticized. Always. Then, you have to deal with drawing conclusions. Maybe.
John, you got the mean-spirited part right; but, then, maybe this dude is still pissed off by an affront at a Mark Cuban cocktail party eight years ago. I don’t know. I couldn’t know. I don’t care to know.
Even straightening out his inappropriate cause-and-effect relationships is a task I could only consider boring. I don’t doubt he hopes to be taken seriously enough [important enough] to engender some debate and certainly agreement. Probably among his peers whoever those suffering bastards are.
Blaming the tools — and the tool designers — won’t inhibit the truly creative and probably not the amateurs either. What’s new?
The way I see it, there are two sides to web 2.0. On the one hand, a bunch of new technologies (and repackaged old technologies) are greatly enhancing the web experience: making it more customizable, more collaborative, and, at the end of the line, more useful to the regular user.
On the other hand, there are way too many startups aiming to captialize these changes. They all look good, they all sound good, hell, I’d even use’em all if there weren’t six or seven of them providing more or less identical copies of each possible service. There’s definitely a bubble forming, but even by the time it bursts web users will be greatly benefitted, as they will have weeded out the weaker services and will be left with the most useful and productive.
As far as replacing traditional media, I agree with Greg that there’s no reason to expect that to happen. Even if every independent filmmaker in the world can easily publish his films online, I’m still going to shell out five or ten bucks to watch the latest Hollywood film. Like Greg said, citizen journalists will fill in the nooks and crannies too small to be covered by big media, and as I’ve said before, they will also serve as commentators, editorializing on the informative content dished out by the mainstream press.
As Lou said, “he cream will always rise to the top”. It doesn’t matter how many digital video cameras are sold, there will always be a market for the best. It doesn’t matter how many independent musicians are out there, we want to best.
Would you rather see a Hollywood Blockbuster starring Tom Cruise or the movie I did this summer of my daughter’s graduation from Pre-School? Hey, I try hard, but would you rather listen to me or Bruce Springsteen?
And as many amateurs as there are, there are an equivalent number of hucksters trying to market some wild idea or just plain take your money.
So, Web 2.0 is a buzzword for “Blogging” and other personal customization of the web? Considering what most MySpace and Live Journal accounts contain (including mine on LJ, which is not under the name “Floyd” by the way), I really don’t think there’s much to this “revolution.” Along with Mr. Fusion, I think I’ll be passing on this revolution.
My dad gave me a pong game….I still can’t figure it out. You guys make me want to cry…..talking about all these techno things…..
MySpace better not be Web 2.0 because MySpace is a rotting stinking toilet.
My reaction to MySpace:
Peut-être votre non plein de la merde, mais vous le mauvais juste d’odeur.
John C.,
Do you really agree with what this guy says? Did I spend too much time in Berkeley during my formative years, or were you too busy to read Keen’s article in full?
While I agree that “Web 2.0” is mostly old technology that is packed in puffery and, in any case, is not well defined, I take serious issue with Mr. Keen’s lament for the passing of what he calls “traditional media”. His insistence that Web 2.0 comes with a sinister “ideology” is also a crock.
He actually uses a quote from Karl Marx(!) to imply that any attempt to transcend the stranglehold that the multi-national music, movie, publishing and TV corporations have on our choice of entertainment and information, is somehow, part of a sinister — or, at best, naive — plot. Nonsense like this can only lend support to the RIAA’s ridiculous contention that copying a song or movie is not only destroying our cherished cultural corporations, it is — gasp — paying for “terrorism.”
Keen complains that “Apple and Google and Craigslist really are revolutionizing our cultural habits, our ways of entertaining ourselves, our ways of defining who we are.”
While extolling the virtues of traditional media, whose airwaves are now dominated by their latest cultural contribution — tabloid-like “reality shows” interrupted by commercials that are even more tasteless — he has the gall to suggest that “we should actually have–if we really care about Mozart, Van Gogh and Hitchcock–a moral obligation to question the development of technology.” I can’t believe that somebody would attach their byline to that kind of drivel.
Keen fails to mention that the industry’s corporate pirates, while publicly touting the benefits of “free enterprise”, actually hate and fear competition. They have made it clear for all to see that when their gloves come off they are nothing but brass-knuckled bullies — they even go after nine year old kids and single working mothers.
Thankfully, when people can finally find alternatives to the kind of crap that has been foisted upon us for so long, at least some of them will go there.The greedy info-tainment oligopoly bears the responsibility for its own demise.
Web 2.0 could be considered LiveJournal and MySpace, but I consider that the personal, 5 person readership end of it. I’d also consider podcasting part of it. Like blogging, that divides into personal and influential sides. I wouldn’t say there’s that much influence there yet but that’s because it’s stil nascent. Blogging has been around longer and has some influential parties, podcasting just has the potential to follow suit.
Maybe not everyone follows the political blogs like I do, but the top ones do have some influence. Contrary to popular opinion, they’re not all just more punditry and opinion. There’s a lot of original research that goes on too. Then there’s activism and sometimes the two go hand in hand.
The web moved Howard Dean from also ran to frontrunner, even if he ultimately didn’t succeed. It cost Dan Rather his job and Trent Lott his leadership position. People give Josh Marshall a lot of credit towards defeating Bush’s Social Security plan. He did a ton of research, put pressure on members of congress to take a position publicly, and then pressured them to get on the right side of it. They’ve also influenced a number of house elections. Paul Hackett’s race comes to mind but there are others. Again, just because it ultimately didn’t work out for him doesn’t mean they didn’t make their presence known. I never said they were all powerful, just that they have some influence.
Actually, I should mention there that the blogs didn’t do any of the above purely on their own, they just got everything in motion and then the tradional media and power players picked up on it and got into the act. However, they probably would not have on their own, or it would have taken longer, or it wouldn’t nearly have been as big. That’s the biggest part of their influence, to be able to sometimes lead the more traditional power players because they do pay some attention to them. They can’t always get them to do what they want, in fact they usually can’t, but it happens.
As for podcasting, the early relative success of things like TWiT, Systm, Diggnation, etc. means it has potential to gather a significant audience outside the confines of established radio and TV. Maybe not significant enough to break into the establishment, but enough to have some influence and maybe someday become self sustaining. I could see people watching less TV/listening to less radio and supplimenting it with podcasts instead. Not everyone, but not everyone reads the political blogs either. That’s what niches are all about.
See, this is what’s called a balanced look. It’s easier to say “this will revolutionize everything” or “this is all a bunch of crap,” but the reality is somewhere in between. However, it’s not nearly as entertaining to read.
The problem with the whole “personal computer revolution” is what a disaster “personal computers” have turned out to be in the internet age.
Why eliminate direct user control? Because, to put it bluntly, the guys at Google and Yahoo are a lot more competent than the average user. Most users are barely able to install software, let alone keep their systems free of malware. Those that know enough to make backups can rarely be bothered enough to actually do so.Simply, the average user’s email archives are a lot safer on Google or Yahoo’s servers than it is on the local PC, where its protected from hardware failures and viruses.
Web applications don’t need to be installed, upgraded, maintained, or backed up, at least by the end user.
As for “more costly and less reliable” – I’ll agree with you the first time that google charges me to use their search engine and gmail gives me a blue screen of death.
Which isn’t to say that web apps are perfect, or can be everything to everyone. Nor do I think that locally run software and operating systems will ever go away. All I’m saying is that for the average PC user, the less control they have, the better off they’ll be.
As for the question of Big/Old/Traditional media vs. blogs…. the only thing that’s really changing is who exercises the editorial control. In old school media, content is filtered by individual editors, and gets in front of individual users through the bottleneck of limited media channels. In the blogosphere, the media channels are infinite and its the network that decides what gets attention. The most interesting things automagically float to the top.
If what you do is crap, no one will link to it, share it with friends, or add value to it. If what you do is good, your friends will tell their friends, who will tell their friends, etc. until it shows up on technorati or memeorandum or digg.
It’s democratic in that some indy band in a garage has as much of a chance of floating to the top as a band signed with a label. Does that mean that the record label band is going to disappear? Hell no. But it does mean that the RIAA is going to have a much tougher time pushing crap on us, because they don’t control the media channels anymore: the aggregate opinion of millions of users do.
In response to Eric, in comment #15:
While I agree with much that you have said, I don’t believe that personal computers have turned out to be a “disaster…in the Internet age.”
Problems? Yes. Do they need improvement? Yes. Disaster? I don’t think so. I know too many people without technical training who are reaping the benefits of both the “computer revolution” and the Internet — in their businesses and in their private lives.
When it comes to allowing gigantic companies to dominate our desktops and, for some of us, our working lives, there is the issue of trust to consider. The potential for monopolistic practices on the part of web application providers is greater than anything we have yet experienced — especially if they collude with, or actually become, the folks who also own the pipes. Before we offer up more of our trust we need to understand what it is that motivates the entities that we will become dependent upon.
Experience teaches that it is incredibly naive to trust in the good will of multi-billion dollar corporations — even when your friends are working for them. Corporations exist to make money for their shareholders. Period. Toward that end, they can easily change hands and, just as easily, they can change policies. This is beyond good and evil. It’s simply the way the system works.
Right now, companies like Google and Yahoo are perceived as “good” and promise to “do no evil” but, as we are too often reminded, business is business. There was a time when Microsoft was not seen as heavy handed or controlling. Apple is viewed as a “trusted” company (naively, in my opinion) by many — but given its appetite for gobbling up large chunks of the entertainment market, that may be changing as we speak.
I am also concerned with what will likely be an increase in the cost of Internet services — at the server end as well as for the user. As people become more and more dependent upon the Internet for their everyday business and recreational software use, price increases for Internet connections are likely to become more frequent, and our choices more limited. Several of the major infrastructure players are already asking for a multi-tier approach to pricing.
Like you, I have no objection to the increasing use of web applications. In fact, I welcome it. But they are not the solution to the problems that come with the Internet, and I certainly wouldn’t want to see Internet users becoming overly dependent upon them.