Slashdot Log In
Is Web 2.0 the Advent of the Post-Modern Internet?
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Oct 20, 2006 11:43 PM
from the totally-art dept.
from the totally-art dept.
jg21 writes "Web 2.0 Journal has an essay on 'The Post-Modern Rhetoric of High Technology' in which the author contends that Web 2.0 is nothing less than 'the advent of the Post-Modern Internet. Will Web 2.0 be a revolution or a mere rebellion?" From the article: "Web 2.0 can take two distinct directions, and it is perhaps the rhetoric of it all that will define the path. Web 2.0 can be the French Revolution of Technology or it can be the American Revolution of Technology. Joseph Schumpeter's winds of creative destruction are blowing especially hard in the Internet technology world today, with remarkable improvements to our daily lives. But these winds can blow too hard too often, and an even older economic law, the Law of Diminishing Returns, begins to take over. Our wild-eyed radical phase must ultimately give way to some replacement. We cannot permanently be the rebels."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Postmodernism applying to the internet? (Score:5, Funny)
2) The terms postmodern, postmodernity and postmodernism can be seen to associate or conjure different meanings: the term postmodern is inclusively ambiguous of what people mean when they talk about issues that come up in discussions of postmodernity and postmodernism. Postmodernity is a sign for contemporary society, for the stage of technological and economic organization which our society has reached. Postmodernism then can be, as Eco says, a "spiritual" category rather than a discrete period in history; a "style" in the arts and in culture indebted to ironic and parodic pastiche as well as to a sense of history now seen less as a story of lineal progression and triumph than as a story of recurring cycles.
Analogously, and only for purposes of illustration, the condition of modernity is often spoken of as the rapid pace and texture of life in a society experienced as the result of the industrial revolution (Berman). However, modern_ism_ is a movement in culture and the arts usually identified as a period and style beginning with impressionism as a break with Realism in the fine arts and in literature. Prior to modernism one finds periods and styles associated with other distinct aesthetic movements, e.g., Romanticism and Realism. For instance, both Blake and Balzac, Romantic and Realist representatives respectively, could be said to have had some experience of modernity, to have lived during the early stages of the expansion of bourgeois or industrial capitalism and technology and science, whereas no one thinks of their respective arts or modes of expression as obviously "modernist."
Summary and translation (Score:5, Insightful)
The appearance of the "Web 2.0" jargon is a strong candidate for being the moment when the Internet jumped the shark.
Parent
Re:Summary and translation (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find ironic is that slashdot, a site dedicated to all things technological, has become the homebase for a group of people who seem to be against change of any kind.
They want to turn back the clock to the days when the web was basically the same as gopher.
It's a very utilitarian outlook. Just black text on a gray background without any interactivity at all.
Parent
Re-read (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read the authors comment (and most around those lines here), you will see what we hate is not the change, but the false labels associated to it.
WTF is "Web 2.0"? It's nothing. Everything going on today has been done before, its nothing new, it's just buzzwords.
People point to MySpace and YouTube, and I point to Geocities and Shoutcast. Only difference between the two is that we have more hardware and bandwidth today so we can deliver richer content (richer interface for developing personal pages, richer media - video vs. audio) - there is nothing *fundamentally* new or revolutionary about most of the web now compared to the web 5 years ago. Sure, there are some bright spots, like Google Maps/GMail/Flickr. But these things emerged gradually - some have been around in one form or another since the 90s. You can't just pick some point in time and go "Oh, it's web 2.0 now".
It's just marketspeak. And we hate marketspeak cause it is meaningless.
Parent
Re:Postmodernism applying to the internet? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Postmodernism applying to the internet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Postmodernism applying to the internet? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Freaking sick of this (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting just sick and tired of hearing about "Web 2.0" as if there were *any* advance or defining characteristic thereto. So far, all I've seen of "Web 2.0" is some incremental advances in the quality and utility of websites using javascript. Neat and fast, but also easily done using "1.0" technologies such as flash or java.
So, it's somewhat faster - wow! This is going to change the world!!!??!?
This is a slew of buzzwords looking for meaning. Asking about Web 2.0 is like asking about god - ask 10 different people, and you'll get 10 different answers!
1998 called - and they want their meaningless hype back. Call me when there's some substance!
Parent
Re:Freaking sick of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Web 2.0 is about psychology, the way people use the now omnipresent network for communication on multiple levels. The internet started with researchers sending each other electronic mail. Now it's everyone talking at once, sharing all of their knowledge, opinions, and experiences with the whomever will listen.
One answer down, nine to go.
Parent
Re:Freaking sick of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Just for your information, these activities took place on Usenet back in the 1980's already. And if you say that masses didn't have access to it, then remember then second half of the 1990s? There were things called forums (web-based) and chat rooms. These things which you would call "Web 1.0" allowed you to do exactly what you said only "Web 2.0 psychology" brought: "everyone talking at once, sharing all of their knowledge, opinions, and experiences with the whomever will listen".
You ultimately proven what most of us here knew alread: Web 2.0 is yet another empty buzzword.
Parent
Or it could just be... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or it could just be... (Score:5, Funny)
Brett
Parent
That's amazingly stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. So nuclear science is "post-modern".
No. This is another is the series of crap articles which claim that X is "post modern" because saying so makes you sound cooler and more educated than everyone else.
If you cannot define something, you do not understand it. But feel free to claim that technologies are "post modern" because it masks the fact that you don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Beside, when you get paid by the word, you really need something that you can pull a lot of words out of.
There is a definition (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
The people of Planet Kling? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's really funny!
The thing is that "postmodern" has a "definition" in art and philosophy the same as the musical genres "rock", "techno", "trance" and "rap" have definitions in music. And they're just as useless when describing technology. We know that "Web 2.0" cannot be "classic rock" because that was created years ago. But it cannot be "new wave" because that is almost as old. "Industrial" has come and gone so that was probably "Web 1.5". Rap is hot right now. Or is it hip-hop? No. "Web 2.0" is definitely "Celtic Fusion Invasion". And now I'll write an article saying that it is.
Web sites can be viewed as "art". But the technology is just technology. Paint brushes were used in "Classical" and "Romantic" and "Postmodern" art. Yet no one is claiming that paint brushes or canvases are "art 2.0" or "Postmodern".
Do websites have a "philosophy"? Is that philosophy shared amongst all Ajax-based sites? No. Ajax is the technology. Technology is not a philosophy.
And so forth.
Parent
Defining is not a prerequisite for understanding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Although this maybe applies to TFA, I beg to differ on your general point. There are plenty of words and concepts which you understand and use perfectly but are incapable of "defining". Words like "Ethics", "Justice", "Religion" and "Morals" are important in our language and in our everyday behavior, but most would be pressed if asked to "define" them. The early Socratic dialogues of Plato (in which such a definition for such concepts was sought in vain) only illustrate this point. The same goes for almost any philosophical movement, not just postmodernism. It's hard to define what "Hegelianism" or even "Logical Positivism" is. The case of postmodernism is special only because its disciples say upfront that they shun any definition of their occupation. But again, this does not mean they do nothing, say nothing, or mean nothing. It may be the case that they do, but you are in no position to judge, just because they shunned a holy "definition".
On the other hand, I do know one thinker who would agree with your exact wordings of the demand for definition, and that would be Leibniz. His ideal was indeed that every concept would have an exact, almost mathematical definition. When in dispute, we would simply say "let us calculate", and resolve any conflicts by analyzing the definitions of concepts. Which could have simplified a lot of Slashdot. But even Leibniz was more pragmatic than that in real life, you know.
Parent
A Blast from the Past... (Score:4, Funny)
Didn't we get rid of Jon Katz years ago? Who invited him back?
Web 2.0 is the advent of (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if I could just find one worth reading.
Read his bio at the end of that article. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Chief Strategy Officer"
And what idiot lists his "campus council" work in his bio once he's gotten his first job?
And for the ultimate humiliation
Parent
He does have a job. (Score:4, Funny)
From his bio
"Skinner Layne is Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of NeXplore Technologies, Inc., a Web 2.0 Social Computing company based in Frisco, Texas."
See? He's the CSO of a company that he co-founded. A Web 2.0 Social Computing company, if you must know.
A Web 2.0 Social Computing company that doesn't have its web page listed in Google's search. Which only returns 24 hits anyway.
Does being paid $5 by Mom to babysit your younger brother count as a "first job"?
Parent
Oh, criminy. (Score:4, Insightful)
What, oh, what will society do without a back button? This is possibly the most vapid article I've read in months. The analogy is weak and no attempt is made to develop it. The author has little comprehension of what the term "postmodernism" ever meant, even if it ever meant anything, apologies Jean-François Lyotard. Doesn't Zonk have something better to do with his time besides posting this kind of tripe? Oh, wait. I must be new here.
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, postmodern means something different in different disciplines. In Literature and Film, it tends to be about breaking things apart into lots of little pieces and then doing critical analyses that pretend to be meaningful but aren't. (Actually, I think we're getting to a post-post-modern phase, where the tools of post-modernity are being used in a non-post-modern way. Garden State was a good example of this--it felt very post-modern, but it wasn't really post-modern.)
Second, the article exerpt (I didn't read the RTFA) says "Web 2.0 is slowing down, possibly a sign of it's reaching maturity. The boom is over!" Using bigger and more annoying words. I'm sorry, but the use of bigger and more annoying words makes me immediately think it's really stupid--not because of the presence of big words, but because of the ratio of syllables to content.
Third, Web 2.0 was more about integration and user-generated content than it was about... hmmm... well, okay, `integration of user-generated content' could take a hint of a stab at claiming to be something postmodern--but honestly, the content is too uniform to be postmodern. Ten million kids whining about their school day...
Hey, that does sound kind of postmodern. But they have to do it at the same time, wearing glaring colors. And maybe there should be a tuba?
I wonder if I can post that thought in a journal? I'll need to add more words... and colors. But they'll give me a Ph.D. Hmm...
An evil journal...
Pompous ass (Score:4, Funny)
News flash; Code and end user interfaces will always change.
The biggest news flash would be if they actually changed for the better.
Web 2.0....And I thought it meant that.. (Score:5, Informative)
According to Wikipedia, "Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004[citation needed], refers to a supposed second-generation of Internet-based services such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies that let people collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways. O'Reilly Media, in collaboration with MediaLive International, used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences and since 2004 it has become a popular (though ill-defined and often criticized) buzzword amongst certain technical and marketing communities."
Ill-defined hardly describes it. If it's that nebulous, don't bother me with it, especially if it's from that guy on Fox or some marketing dweebs.
Web 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
To me this is the single main characteristic of sites described by that term, though...Sites that have completely peer to peer or submitted contact which is either exchanged or cross-pollinated between users at extremely high speeds. It's extremely group-oriented in nature...these sites are multi-user by definition; they can't exist with only one person using them at once, because they rely on users to provide the actual content.
Are they a good thing? For communication and collaborative problem solving, certainly...but there have been a number of times when browsing digg in particular, when I've developed a headache and have begun to feel severely overwhelmed...there is just *so much* data constantly flying around.
People have talked about digg being preferable to Slashdot, but I believe they both have their place. I can't cognitively tolerate digg for more than short periods; like I said, it's simply too much. Slashdot on the other hand allows me to pace the rate at which data comes to me; Articles are long enough that they can be read one at a time without there being more on the screen...and despite the idiotic "humour" which is present here at times, there is still a lot more substance and insight in the topics here than I've seen on digg so far.