Select one or more elements of Web 2.0 that struck you as interesting from Tuesday’s discussion. Write about your impressions, citing examples from the web.
Well, my first thought, elevated and circumspect as it was, was, “Well, I guess I ought to bite the bullet and learn the basics of XML.”
And then, “Come to think of it, a Flickr account would be a good way to log my photos while I’m in China.”
Flickr always seemed a little extraneous for my own personal uses; I publish most photos with intent to keep them relatively private, relatively quiet, because I’m not a photographer and rarely produce work of artistic merit in the medium, and thus the photographs are of either a personal or commercial nature, and tend to be posted according to that dichotomy – art photos are posted to deviantArt, where their context is primary and of greater priority than their content, and personal photos – funny things, memories, the odd, awkward, childish shot of something pretty – go up at Facebook or on my own sites.
But I’ve never really had a camera while travelling, and I’ve never travelled anywhere more interesting than San Francisco, so while I’m in China I doubt I’ll be able to put the camera away. And given that the photos might be of interest to someone, somewhere, and potentially have value outside of their context as photos some twentysomething homebody on their first international trip, I’d be happy to share them much more broadly than I otherwise might have.
And for the first time, I’d be truly contributing to the database. I’ve used tagged content elsewhere – on blogs, for example, or over at dA (not that that content is released for display elsewhere), or in limited other situations such as public-service image-tagging or similar. But most of these have been of limited application and even more limited utility to people who aren’t me. Shots of the apartments at Fudan University, though? Or at the Bund? Or a noodle cart? Things I might release under CC licensing, or at least publicly for the educational benefit of… maybe a future study-abroad applicant, anyway. There was rather a paucity of such shots online when I needed them. (Come to think of it, I still need them.)
One of the other problems that I’ve had for years that 2.0 seems to be making a few faltering efforts to solve is the number of services available on the web and their lack of interface with each other; I know I’ve had on the order of about ten profiles I actually bother to maintain, and elsewhere if I give any information whatsoever it tends to be references to other profiles. In theory, sufficiently compatible metadata could eradicate this issue; thinking of the possibility of updating only one profile – perhaps the one whose interface you most prefer (!!) – is tantalizing. This, however, gets to be tricky territory for service providers – at the moment, they can compete based on weight alone: the Microsoft method, by which you succeed because you have a corner on the market and compatibility is nil. If the climate begins to favor metadata, portability of information, cross-compatibility, they’ll have to compete for a userbase on the quality of services instead, which is a thrilling idea as a consumer. Not having to choose between the interface at Livejournal and a particular social circle at Xanga might appeal to more than just this user. It’s why I’m so fond of Adium; all the connectivity without redundant applications taking up digital space and human time for customization, preferences, endless updates…
And again we return to the central advantage of a 2.0 web environment – instead of spending time organizing data, we spend time creating and consuming it.
Of course, being able to separate your information might be just as necessary. Do you really want to have to project a consistently professional image on Facebook just because your boss would be able to access the profile through LinkedIn? Political or religious views in your artwork or creative writing projects online might not go over so well with your manager; will we need to censor ourselves in an attempt to remain consistent now that the evidence of our longstanding inconsistencies can follow us around through space and time? How might this be achieved, and how long a breadcrumb trail will we leave anyway? Augustine would hardly have become a priest, much less a saint, in this day and age if photographs from his youth managed to circulate their way into the hands of the church; it’s easier to forgive that which can be forgotten. Past and present (and work and play) become confounded in this system of easily-made, instantaneously-transported records of events. Will the sanctions for certain indiscretions soften when everyone is equally exposed? I’ve often wondered if some of the indulgence we offer children today has to do with the fact that there are much more vivid, numerous records of parents’ own childhoods to remind them that they were like their own once; what happens when we reach the point at which a young teen can log on and view decades-old information, and discovers his own father’s forgotten Mashable profile, complete with a photo of him posing with a bad haircut and an obscene gesture? I’ve already experienced a certain age-flattening effect on the web, but that’s a new kind of anachronism.
New forms of viral-and-collaborative-behaviour-friendly creative endeavor have sprung up around 2.0 as well, from the overall silliness of Ytmnd.com – the paragon mashup website, complete with its own memes – to the gamut of Oekaki boards, FanFiction.net and Ficlets. As the technologies become more sophisticated, I hope to see content do the same; as it does so, new art forms become more likely to win acceptance for their exemplified creativity, relevance and merit.
It’ll be interesting to see how things work out.
Tags: compatibility, competition, flickr, marketing, privacy, web 2.0
