Just because I can I feel like ranting about “Web 2.0” and how completely retarded a term it is. The term has been in existence since around 2004 and has been bandied about an awful lot in the last year or two, with people asking for website design that is all “web 2.0”.
It’s fucking bullshit. Wikipedia defines Web 2.0 as:
Web 2.0 encapsulates the idea of the proliferation of interconnectivity and interactivity of web-delivered content. Tim O’Reilly regards Web 2.0 as the way that business embraces the strengths of the web and uses it as a platform. O’Reilly considers that Eric Schmidt‘s abridged slogan, don’t fight the Internet, encompasses the essence of Web 2.0 — building applications and services around the unique features of the Internet, as opposed to expecting the Internet to suit as a platform (effectively “fighting the Internet”).
In an IBM developer podcast, Tim Berners-Lee explains his thoughts on “Web 2.0”:
I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.
My thought is this: giving the “web” version-numbers is just about as stupid as giving the human race version-numbers. People love to label stuff so they can either a) understand/pigeonhole it, or b) make more money from it. Where are we now as a species? Human8.01 Beta? With Humans9 planned for 2050. The web evolves, come on, why the fuck would you want to put a version-number on an evolutionary process?
All this serves to do is confuse the uneducated into thinking that someone out there is actually releasing “updates” to the internet like it’s a piece of software controlled by a single company.
I say again, it’s bullshit.
It’s not going to go away either. The marketers need their thing to push on people (“What you need is a more web3.0 website”), and every once in a while I hear people suggesting what “Web3.0” will be. I do like the discussion page on Wikipedia regarding why the Web3.0 page has been deleted, especially this quote:
“Web 3.0” remains an amorphous protologism without a single coherant meaning, and should be deleted again.
That’s my Rant2.0 over. Look out for Rant2.1 Alpha coming soon.
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