Words as Pointers, and the Meaning of Web 2.0
I had a great exchange with Steven White the other day in the comments on my entry Why Web 2.0 is More Than a Buzzword.
Steve took great exception to the term, but after we had a spirited debate in the comments, he wrote a thoughtful blog entry about our difference of opinion, Is Tim Just Mizundastood?. He still hates the term "Web 2.0," because he thinks the Web is badly broken, and needs to be replaced by more robust technologies. But Steve now understands that what I'm really talking about isn't the web at all, or not just the web, but the movement of technology towards the global internet as platform, and all that means. In particular, he now understands that:
"Having had my cringing reaction to the name acknowledged, I was free to move on....The most important aspect that I noted was that Tim had attached a consistent set of meanings to a new term. It was previously "the internet operating system" and "infoware", but the motifs were consistent throughout a stream of articles over the years. That explained the shifting meanings of Web 2.0, as a message was being played on the strings of whatever instrument was closest to hand.
That meaning is augumenting human intelligence and forming collective insights by computer aided collaboration...
When the web browser is replaced by something new that maintains and enhances the advantages that the web browser first highlighted, then Tim will have the same ideas with a different name. The consistency is in the message, not in the meaning of the term "Web 2.0". Playing "Danny Boy" on a piano is the same song when played on a guitar... but words are supposed to have a consistent meaning.
As a phrase, "Web 2.0" breaks encapsulation by associating implementation with naming. Any programmer knows that you should keep your APIs technology neutral so you can switch modules without rewriting. So I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of people streneously objecting to the "Web 2.0" naming are programmers....
So look past the name, which is the ugly schnozzle on the face of a beautiful set of ideas. The name will change as the technology moves on....
As this happens, Tim will be accused (as has already happened) of shifting the goalposts because his verbiage is altering over time. Different words and different emphasis look like he's shifting his grounds like a politician reneging on his election promises, but what he's saying hasn't changed for the last 10 years. I don't think it'll change for the next 10."
Steve nailed something very important. As I mentioned to him in email, one of my favorite quotes is from an ancient Greek orator (whose name I've forgotten) who said, "The difference between a man and a sheep is that a sheep just bleats, but a man keeps saying the same thing in different ways until he gets what he wants." And he's right. I've been calling the same thing by different names over the years: infoware, the internet operating system, the open source paradigm shift, and now Web 2.0. The name changes partly because the ideas have come more into focus, and partly opportunistically, as all language evolves. I'm trying to point to an idea, and some words seem to work better than others. "Web 2.0," for all its shortcomings as a term, has caught on.
But I have to say that I don't entirely agree with Steve's point that "words are supposed to have a consistent meaning." Words pass meaning by reference, not by value. They are pointers, and any student of language knows how much their value changes over time.
A great example from literature: in Jane Austen's time (early 1800s), the word "condescension" had a very positive meaning. It referred to the "gracious" act of a higher status individual being kind to one of lower status. Now that we've moved away from an acceptance of the English nobility as some kind of higher caste, the word has a negative meaning: looking down on someone as an inferior. The word is the same, but it now points to the opposite meaning.
But still, I take his point about proper encapsulation, and that the association of "Web 2.0" with the web is unfortunate (because the phenomenon is not restricted to http-based technologies). But even here, despite lots of other people asserting that Web 2.0 has something to do with Ajax, or mashups, or various specific technologies, I've tried from the beginning to give it a broad but consistent meaning. My first attempt, the paper What is Web 2.0? spent ten or fifteen pages walking around the subject, but I've now got it down to a short definition: "Web 2.0 is the move to the internet as platform, and an understanding of the rules for success on that new platform. First among those rules is building applications that harness network effects to get better the more that people use them."
I loved the debate with Steve. I think we both came away with new ideas and changed minds as a result of our exchange. It was a great example of blogging as conversation starter. It's worth reading Steve's entire entry (linked above) because of the way he explains how the "cluetrain" works. He wasn't expecting to hear directly from me, and surprised to have a rant turn into a conversation.
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[11.30.06 07:26 AM]
franticindustries --
Your definition doesn't work for me at all -- and explains why people like Steve White hate the term "Web 2.0." Web 2.0 is NOT just about the web.
Skype and BitTorrent and SetiAtHome and iTunes are all Web 2.0 applications, but none of them are "web" applications. What's more, the "many-to-many" web has always existed. Just because some sites treated the Web like television doesn't mean that all of them did! This is why Tim Berners-Lee has always been uncomfortable with the term "Web 2.0." It's the SAME web.
It's not a difference in web technology. It's a difference in scale, and a difference in second-order effects of that technology, in which people have figured out how to harness it better. For example, before Google, people spidered the web and analyzed the documents they found, but no one thought to analyze the link structure. There were photo sharing sites before Flickr, but Flickr figured out how to increase the virality by making photos public as the default value, and by using web services to distribute those photos across the net.
[11.30.06 08:22 AM]
You're right about the web 2.0 not being just about WWW - although in retrospect, I guess I was thinking of it that way.
I'm looking at your definition once again, and essentially, it can't find anything wrong with it...except that it's too open-ended for a definition, if you get what I mean.
I'm not inventing new stuff here, mind you. I'm looking at your definition and trying to put it in another way. (hey, I'm sure you love that, after you've spent weeks and months thinking on it some guy comes along and thinks he can do it better (: )
Let's try another, this time for a Web 2.0 application:
Web 2.0 application is any Internet application whose value intrinsically grows with the amount of its users.
Have I nailed it yet? (:
[11.30.06 08:50 AM]
I guess "open ended" is in the eye of the beholder. Your comment reminds me of the scene in Amadeus, when the Emperor says to Mozart, "Too many notes!" and Mozart replies that it was the exact right number, neither too many nor too few.
I believe it is about understanding what "the internet as platform" really means, and that the heart of that understanding is harnessing network effects -- whether in viral distribution and marketing, or databases that get better via explicit or implicit user contribution, or in product development that involves users as co-developers (by real time testing of web apps, or by massive betas, or by automated reporting of bugs.)
Your definition completely misses, for example, Microsoft's Dr. Watson as a Web 2.0 phenomenon. It really is about building systems that get better the more people use them.
[11.30.06 09:36 AM]
After reading what I wrote, and then what you wrote, and then rereading both a couple of times, I actually think we pretty much agree on everything. (:.
[11.30.06 09:58 AM]
Tim,
To follow up to your comments directed at my comment on your last post, I have a few thoughts on efficient communication and the use of "Web 2.0".
I think some resistance to the term "Web 2.0" is because of the differing roles of entrepreneurs or producers, and analysts, passive investors, commentators, etc, for whom labels for trends are useful.
For instance, a creator of art (the entrepreneur) would never say "I'm am impressionist" or "I'm working on a cubist project." Instead, the art dealer or student or critic finds these terms useful to place the artist or the work in a framework to sell, compare, or discuss the work.
While the the artist may find inspiration from a particular movement, she or he is best when the work done is because of a proprietary vision - a vision looses need for general terms immediately after the moment of inspiration. Sure, my project and the projects of hundreds of other "Web 2.0" entrepreneurs were inspired by, and are a part of, the "Web 2.0" movement. But identifying our attempts at creating a "Guernica"-like masterpiece seems silly to identify as "Web 2.0". Did our movements' prophets -- the Picasso-like Sergys Brins or (newer) Chad Hurleys -- say they were setting out to work on a "Web 2.0" project? Surely they used more specific and meaningful ways to convey their vision. Picasso did not talk about cubism in his moving effort to convey the devastation at Guernica, he used much more personal and specific language.
"Web 2.0" is impersonal as a term and only describes a movement. Frankly I think we can identify nearly everything going on in this day as a part, at least fractionally, of the Web 2.0. Let's find room in our vocabulary to talk more specifically and meaningfully about what's going on.
[11.30.06 01:20 PM]
A good re-read of Marshall McLuhan's "Understanding Media" would seem to put much of this into perspective. The inherent characteristics of the medium inform the true "meaning" or implication that the medium will have on/for society. This includes the applications and approaches that will be most successful within that medium.
Web 2.0 to me always seemed to be a deft approach at encapsulating the significance of the Internet as a medium in keeping with McLuhan. The medium (in this case a non-hiearchical, networked, always-on, interactive communication platform) is still the message.
[11.30.06 06:40 PM]
It may be the other way around, and Web 2.0 is the technical description of a broader concept.
Augumented intelligence, transhumanism and the Singularity are also about the same concepts, without any indication of how they will happen. Right now, as much as I think the web falls short, it is undeniable that the main activity for those concepts is happening in this area. People are discovering network effects with their web browsers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism
The web is a hunk of junk, much as the early experiments in electronic music were unappealing (and I say this as a Kraftwerk fanatic). I cannot overstate how incredibly bad all of the web technologies are, many of them designed as a throwaway experiment that suddenly had to be maintained.
One thought bugs me though... Ethernet is still here, even though it's nothing at all like what Bob Metcalfe invented. Is everything going to be called the Web, no matter what it becomes?
The move towards collective intelligence will be based on different technologies. Tim will then re-state the ideas of transhumanism in the context of those technologies.
But it's not going to happen if Tim talks about the Rapture without some implementation specific detail. So, ironically, I've swung 180. Web 2.0 is a good label precisely because it's such a bad name.
It is implementation specific, it points to where the current activity is happening and it sucks just as much as the technology that it's talking about.
[12.01.06 09:17 AM]
Web 2.0 app = Web 1.0 app + built-in improvement process
[12.01.06 11:31 AM]
Serge -- very nice!
[12.01.06 06:06 PM]
Tim,
Web 2.0 is not a buzzword, it simply describes a dimension of Web Interaction that's focused on "Services" as opposed to "Hypertext". The trouble with Web 2.0 is that is sometimes projected as a nirvana rather than "One of Several Stops" along an "Innovation Continuum".
Web 2.0 supporters can't understand why early Web users don't grok the concept. Unfortunately, Web 2.0 supporter struggle with the emergence of the next frontier: "The Data-Web" (Semantic Web Layer -1). For instance, you correctly describe "Harnessing Collective Intelligence" as an emerging benefit of the mesh we know as the Web while questioning the plausibility of the "Semantic Web" (I commented about a response to your somewhat hyperbolic commentary about the Semantic Web in an earlier post).
Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 ( Data-web or "Web of Databases" or Semantic Web Layer - 1), and beyond are all mutually inclusive dimensions of interaction in the "Innovation Continuum" called the World Wide Web.
[12.02.06 04:09 AM]
Personally I dont care what this new movement is called. I think it has helped me on a personal level to have such a naming convention for a very crucial and important movement that I might have overlooked otherwise.
Its primarily a web phenomenon and its a move forward from a prior state so web 2.0 isnt such a bad term if you ask me. Maybe it should just be called "2 dot zero" overall since the thinking applies to so many other areas such as business 2.0 etc.
Other than that it has refueled a lot of ancient studies for me that go back to before the .com bubble where I was actively pursuing different methods for intelligent user driven networks which I called Angels at the time. Being way ahead of my time my ideas were compared by others to very basic concepts such as email and yahoo etc. Today 7 or 8 years later I am just happy that the web 2.0 movement is big and respected enough for me to get into the game again. Thank you web 2.0.
[12.03.06 06:07 AM]
Nate -- good perspective on the Web 2.0 as analogous to "cubism," "impressionism," as a term for commentators more than the original practitioners. Any broad term to describe a movement is like this.
But us to more specific terms, we have those too: "harnessing collective intelligence," "lightweight web services," "mashups," "Ajax", the "perpetual beta" style of programming including "two-pizza teams," etc. etc. People are inventing lots of new terms trying to point to all the new ideas and practices that collectively make up Web 2.0.
[12.03.06 06:38 PM]
Tim,
Good discussion. If I may add my 2.0 cents then I would for the most part agree with Nate above that the symantics used to decibe the movement are insignificant when compared to the fruits which the movement bears. But, like most engineers, I like to classify and organize the world around me (it helps me sleep better at night). I would say that, for me, the Web 2.0 movement means a more fluid version of Web 1.0 whereby the users have more power to shape and mold the medium they work in. The medium gets smarter (hopefully) with the input from each user.
[08.07.07 05:53 AM]
Hi, great post.
I`d like to translate your article to Polish. Let me know if its ok?
[08.07.07 07:56 AM]
Yes, Decimus, translating to polish is fine. Please acknowledge and link to the source, and when you're done, put a link to your version in the comments here.
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franticindustries [11.30.06 06:41 AM]
Quote: "Web 2.0 is the move to the internet as platform, and an understanding of the rules for success on that new platform. First among those rules is building applications that harness network effects to get better the more that people use them."
You have a nice description there, but I'm not sure it works as a definition. Here's mine:
Web 2.0 is the World Wide Web's shift from being a one-to-many experience to a many-to-many experience.