Thursday, August 18, 2011

* Singular Choice: I am a Datum




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
(from Wikipedia)
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design,[1] andcollaboration on the World Wide Web



From

You Are Not a Gadget

by 

Jaron Lanier


Something like missionary reductionism has happened to the internet with the rise of web 2.0.  The strangeness is being leached away by the mush-making process.  Individual web pages as they first appeared in the 1990s had the flavor of personhood.  MySpace preserved some of that flavor, though a process of regularized formatting had begun.  Facebook went further, organizing people into multiple-choice identities, while Wikipedia seeks to erase point of view entirely.

If a church or government were doing these things, it would feel authoritarian, but when technologists are the culprits, we seem hip, fresh and inventive.  (kindle 995+)






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