Couldn't have said it better!
Saw this in TOI on 29th December 2006.
Blog Blah
Himani Dalmia
All this hype about Web 2.0, the new generation of Internet services, where dotcom is so last season and Wiki is not just a funny word, seems to overlook the fact that blogging and online collaboration are just ways to give mindless drivel a free hand. First, let's take blogs themselves. Who wants to read pages of claptrap by some Johnny-got-empowered with detailed expositions on subjects like his favourite fruit or things he feels guilty about? Even the few sensible bloggers out there receive such dippy responses that it's a wonder they find the strength to go on writing. The blogosphere is like an overcrowded city where people streak down the street naked and complete strangers thrust pamphlets in your face. It thrives on reverse voyeurism, the instinct that makes you secretly hope someone will peep through the window while you shower. Here, one doesn't need to convince a TV producer or editor that what you have to say is worth being broadcast. This is no triumph of free speech; it's a validation of incoherence and mediocrity.
Then there are all those other pools of information, data wired into a virtual monster through the thousands of androids plugged into it. There are sites where people hungry for human contact tap strangers on the back to ask if they can be friends. There are encyclopaedias where no one controls the content. So if I want to say that polonium is actually a healthy snack, no one can stop me. The whole thing is a virtual wasteland assisting human beings in their quest to think less. The only hope is that, like all things in the tech world, Web 2.0 will also pass. In fact, there is already talk of a Web 3.0. Experts say that, while the web today can hold information, it can't think for itself. Web 3.0 will be one step closer to the artificial intelligence science fiction dreams about. It will tailor-make solutions for your particular problems. Maybe once the Web becomes a thinking being, human beings will remember they are that too. Let's hope that, if Web 1.0 was an entrepreneurial bubble and Web 2.0 a universal spittoon, Web 3.0 will be a personal advisor that will make achievers of us all.
Blog Blah
Himani Dalmia
All this hype about Web 2.0, the new generation of Internet services, where dotcom is so last season and Wiki is not just a funny word, seems to overlook the fact that blogging and online collaboration are just ways to give mindless drivel a free hand. First, let's take blogs themselves. Who wants to read pages of claptrap by some Johnny-got-empowered with detailed expositions on subjects like his favourite fruit or things he feels guilty about? Even the few sensible bloggers out there receive such dippy responses that it's a wonder they find the strength to go on writing. The blogosphere is like an overcrowded city where people streak down the street naked and complete strangers thrust pamphlets in your face. It thrives on reverse voyeurism, the instinct that makes you secretly hope someone will peep through the window while you shower. Here, one doesn't need to convince a TV producer or editor that what you have to say is worth being broadcast. This is no triumph of free speech; it's a validation of incoherence and mediocrity.
Then there are all those other pools of information, data wired into a virtual monster through the thousands of androids plugged into it. There are sites where people hungry for human contact tap strangers on the back to ask if they can be friends. There are encyclopaedias where no one controls the content. So if I want to say that polonium is actually a healthy snack, no one can stop me. The whole thing is a virtual wasteland assisting human beings in their quest to think less. The only hope is that, like all things in the tech world, Web 2.0 will also pass. In fact, there is already talk of a Web 3.0. Experts say that, while the web today can hold information, it can't think for itself. Web 3.0 will be one step closer to the artificial intelligence science fiction dreams about. It will tailor-make solutions for your particular problems. Maybe once the Web becomes a thinking being, human beings will remember they are that too. Let's hope that, if Web 1.0 was an entrepreneurial bubble and Web 2.0 a universal spittoon, Web 3.0 will be a personal advisor that will make achievers of us all.
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