Library clips

David Weinberger is our web 2.0 philosopher, I like his macro view of the read/write web…I’m yet to read Everything is Miscellaneous.

This post is nothing new, but it’s good to sit back once and a while and look at the big picture.

World of Physicality
- a newspaper is a physical object based around authority, a bunch of people decide what’s on our frontpage…one-to-many broadcast.

World of 1’s and 0’s
- this all changes online, because of the participative web we can choose the authority we like
- anyone can publish, collect and send links, upload stuff…many-to-many
- we subscribe and network within a social filter we trust
- basically we now make our own newspaper based on content from who we trust
- eg. Facebook, Google Reader, iGoogle, del.icio.us, YouTube, Twitter, FriendFeed, Toluu, wikis, mashup

This is bringing into light or fulfilling what the terms “personalisation” and “customisation” have always strived to mean; explicit and implicit “attention” come into the equation to form the recommendation web…people sometimes think this is what web 3.0 is about (I really don’t like that term).

The web is a massive document management system, and there’s no way we could search it daily to find stuff that interests us. So in comes Google with PageRank, meaning when I put in a search term the top hits will be pages that are popular, that is, a lot of other pages refer or point to this page.

This is good and all, but not good enough, we want to tune into stuff we like via our reading habits, but most of all via the popularity of our friends, that is, my social circle. This is where blogs, bookmarks (folksonomies), networks have changed everything…findability, filters, discovery, recommendation, serendipity, autonomy, collective intelligence, innovation, progress.

Up unitl now information has been dumped into not one, but various buckets, and you had to dredge through it. Instead now information is flowing and you tune into the flow, it’s so effortless and less frustrating. Stuff comes to your attention that you like, and this all happens because you participate…it’s about people, but even more, it’s the value in people connected (networks).

Email allowed people to send links eg. “check this out..”, “this is your sort of thing…”. But email is limited in discovery, you can’t tune into people, you are just pushed stuff, and it’s not visible or re-usable-it gets pushed to you, you can’t go find emails.
Instead of just sending links, people can also publish stuff they find, and others can subscribe..this makes information more public, and allows you to choose what you want to see to avoid information stress. When you augment this to a social network, this knowledge flows and is a two way connection, with plenty of serendipity.

David says we are now in an age of abundance, not scarcity - now we all get to choose our authors, and assemble our own news.

I no longer seek information from “experts”, rather from people I trust.

There is no longer a distinct line between performers and spectators, we can all be participants.

There’s no longer a circle with an authoritative centre and receivers (or the gullible) on the edges, instead it’s kind of shapeless it’s more an intertwined network that looks like scribble.

In marketing I learnt the SWOT analysis where “O” means “Opportunities”, I think web 2.0 and the flat world has well and truly capitalised on opportunity. When you are more in touch, and on the pulse, you see more relevant stuff go by…it’s not just about capitalising on them, it’s about coming across more of them to exploit.