[ neoblogical ]

I’m sitting in the opening session of socon07 at Kennesaw State University. The opening discussion seems to have a decided “what’s web2.0 good for?” flavor.

One participant slammed web2.0 because of all the “crap” that’s out there which, in his words, makes it hard to get the information we want because all the crap that gets in the way. His term for it was “web2.0 incontinence.” His comments were in response to a comment on web2.0 proliferation as “masturbatory.” I think what that person meant was that a lot of people are creating stuff just because it gratifies them without really benefitting the web community or being very useful.

Another person commented that one way to view web2.0 versus web1.0 is that in terms of 2-way versus 1-way. That might be as simple and good a definition as I’ve come across, as long as we are charitable and allow that 2-way covers one to many, many to one, and many to many.

But even though I like that simple definition, it also seems to me that that there is a 1-way sense of web2.0, where it doesn’t matter who reads or consumes what one posts on the web. In this sense, what matters is that the content creator is constructing and creating identity, and personal meaning, just in the act of creating the post. And I would argue that there is a sense in which posting to the web via blogs and other media is fundamentally different than writing in a paper journal. This is not to say that people don’t want readers, or that readers are not important, but once the readers get involved, the identity construction and meaning making are changed and must be talked about in a different sense. Although the posting or creation of the content may not be separate from the consumption of the content and the ensuing audience interaction, it must be at least logically separated for consideration and study separately from the interaction with others.

Technorati Tags: Digital Culture, Faciality, Identity, Online Life, Rhetoric, socon07, web2.0