I just wanted to say how much I’ve come to dislike this “Web 2.0” faux-meme. It’s not only vacuous marketing hype, it can’t possibly be right. In terms of qualitative changes of everyone’s experience of the Web, the first happened when Google hit its stride and suddenly search was useful for, and used by, everyone every day. The second—syndication and blogging turning the Web from a library into an event stream—is in the middle of happening. So a lot of us are already on 3.0. Anyhow, I think Usenet might have been the real 1.0. But most times, the whole thing still feels like a shaky early beta to me. [Tim O’Reilly responds at length. I’ll have more to say, but Tim’s piece deserves some contemplation on its own before that; also, this would be a good time for others to enter the conversation.] [Here’s my follow-on piece.]


author · Dad
colophon · rights
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August 04, 2005
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