Tim Berners-Lee on Web 2.0: “nobody even knows what it means”
I haven’t listened to the interview yet, but it looks as though the inventor of the Web isn’t too hot on the idea of Web 2.0 as something new. Specifically, he argues that the original web acted as a collaborative space.
For geeks like me who were learning html in 1995, that might have been partially true, but there are a number of emergent aspects which I would argue make the ‘connecting of people’ more of a reality:
- Greater interactivity through scripting and databases has brought the web beyond just static pages,
- Greater attention to design has made using web pages, and even publishing much easier (think Blogger), and finally
- Greater connections are being made between content points. Digg, delicious, trackbacks and other collaborative/responsive linking and moderation is tying the web much closer together than simple static links.
- (edit: add to this extensible web applications and open web services/APIs which allow for greater customization of experience)
Sure, this might not be “2.0,” but the name does indicate what has been happening on the web: something new which has even more greatly democratized mass communication.