One person recently asked me this question by email:

“The key part of Web 2.0 is that there is something about these new tools that enable new practices of collaboration,” said John Seely Brown, a consultant and former chief scientist of Xerox, who spoke at the Collaborative Technology Conference in Boston last week. “Web 2.0 is a profoundly participatory medium.”
[…]

My question to experienced bloggers is, what is the something? We had the same functionality 20 years ago, and some 40 yrs ago,
now touted as Web 2.0. What makes the difference in your opinions?

I answered him with:

Quickly, without thinking much about it, I would say the accessibility: anybody has the power to be ear if they have something to say that
worth listening at.

But it’s more than accessibility: it’s global and “easy” to use. I can follow, while reading a blog, what US soldier live in Iraq, or find out what is the feminine condition in Iran, or talk about the World Cup, I can post a photo, using my cell phone, of the London Bombing if I was here, etc. Some click, a connection, something to share, and something magic happen.

I am questioning myself about the emerging “Web2.0” trend. I don’t think it is a question of concepts, but more a question of technological conjuncture: much lower hardware price, Internet connection for everybody, anywhere in the World (I got an Internet Access at 3500m above the sea level in the middle of the Himalaya in the national park of the Everest at about 15 km of it in Namche Bazaar), the emergence of scalable and performing open source software, protocols, systems and architectures (the LAMP architecture for example), etc.

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