Thursday, September 07, 2006

Tim Berners-Lee and the Emperor's Web 2.0

I haven't been doing much posting lately, for reasons I have already explained, but I have continued to be a consumer, and was sufficiently galvanised by this item about Tim Berners-Lee's take on Web 2.0. He is reported to have said that Web 2.0 is "purely a blog and wiki thing".

Tim Berners-Lee, the individual credited with inventing the web and giving so many of us jobs, has become the most prominent individual so-far to point out that the Web 2.0 emperor is naked. Berners-Lee has dismissed Web 2.0 as useless jargon nobody can explain and a set of technology that tries to achieve exactly the same thing as "Web 1.0."
At the risk of sounding like an iconoclast, I don't believe that the enormous contribution that Berners-Lee has made, means that his view is automatically definitive. I'm not necessarily rejecting what he has to say, but his baby is all growed up, and other people's perceptions may well have just as much validity as his own. I know that George Siemens shouted a loud hurrah. It will be interesting to see what other responses are evoked.

4 comments:

Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher said...

From his perspective it may be the same, after all he was creating on web 1.0. However, the average person wasn't. I did because I created web pages, but the average person just clicked and read and that was it. Now they are creators and are involved in the process. So, I guess from his perspective he doesn't see the difference. But to truly understand the difference, you have to look through the eye glasses of the average web user and that is a perspective that Berners-Lee doesn't have.

Anonymous said...

No argument from me! I was feeling a bit apologetic for disagreeing with such a prominent figure - I'm really glad I'm not the only one.

Anonymous said...

It feels a little like the Wright brothers complaining about the inventor of the jet engine

Anonymous said...

Well said, Martin! That sums it up perfectly.