How the Web 2.0 will change the way of forming opinions.

Foreword 2021: This is an essay from 2006, while doing my Master in Digital Design, part of the Design, Technology & Society course at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.

Amely Kling, 2006 (unaltered)

Last year a new spirit arose in the Internet. Something that is based on the same technology but uses different principles. A new generation of websites and online services, which started the last years and were astonishing successfully. Soon a term was formed for it, the “Web 2.0”. This essay begins with a description of the Web 2.0, the differences to 1.0 and describes it as a “cybernetic organism”. Based on the identified differences it shows how the role of the user changed from a passive consumer to an active participant, and that this changes the way of forming opinions. The last part addresses the digital divide and the incorporated limitations of the Web 2.0.

So, what is meant by the term “Web 2.0”? Is it just a buzzword, used by marketing people for selling purposes? Or is it more than that? Hopefully it’s more. As the original O’Reilly Web 2.0 article suggests, it is a collection of technologies and business models that have proven to be successful. They survived the new economy crash, or were developed after it. The article identified several Websites, which provide the same service, as 1.0 and others as 2.0, and looked for the differences between them. In a following post on his Weblog, Tim O’Reilly gave a widely recognized and compact definition, based on the first article.

» Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences. «, Tim O’Reilly, 2005

Many comments on this post criticized that the definition is more about the technical side, and the side on people is missing. And in fact Web 2.0 is about people and how Websites are build to serve the needs of the people more than the needs of the company or person who is providing the Website.

To identify Web 2.0 more clearly in means of how it will change the way of forming political opinions, it is necessary to describe what Web 1.0 was. During the nineties the Internet was often referred to the »Information Superhighway«. As Mirzoeff says in his book “An introduction to visual culture”, this metaphor can be seen as widely masculine, indicating that the Internet is connected to the male obsession with cars, high speeds and powerful engines. (Mirzoeff, 1999:108) The web applications and companies of this era tried to fit in this schema. They tried to get as big as possible, to get more users than their competitors. This behaviour forced them to avoid linking to other websites, as they were afraid of loosing their users. The Web 1.0 as an “Information Superhighway” was built without exits. When users needed more than one source of information, they were forced to find them by their own. Christian Eigner called those websites ”media islands”.

The Web 2.0, if referred to the highway metaphor, is more like a dense road network. This network is made of many small but efficient websites, which don’t try to satisfy every imaginable need, but are outstanding good in satisfying one specific need. They achieve this through the use of network effects. To create those effects, they need to be strongly connected, more than they were in the Web 1.0 era. Automated processes and people make those connections.

Some techniques used are “trackbacks”, “folksonomy” and “social bookmarking”. Folksonomy means that parts of a website, e.g. entries in a blog or links in a collection of links, are tagged with several words – tags – which describe their content. The parts get a meaning that is understandable for computers. So computer applications can find content that is related to an article a user is currently reading. The tags are not just applied by the author of the content; everyone can apply them. Trackbacks are used to create links in two directions. It enables authors to create a link between their content and the content they’re refer to, on the website of the original content. This technique is widely used by blogs. An example: blogger A writes a definition of “web 2.0”. Blogger B does not agree and has another definition, which he posts on his blog. To inform blogger A and his visitors about it, he sends a trackback to the blog-software of blogger A, which automatically generates a link from the article of blogger A to the article of blogger B. Social bookmarking stands for sharing personal bookmarks with the public. As bookmarks can be seen as a successful result of a search in the web, the result of social bookmarking is a collection of links to websites, which are proven to be relevant. Combined with folksonomy it is a very effective way to find relevant information of specific topic, described by tags.

All these techniques have one thing in common, the collaboration of people and computers. As none of them could achieve this level of efficiency without the other, the construct can be called a cybernetic organism. It is an organism, which uses the evaluation of information through humans and the data-handling capabilities of computers to create a dense network of meaningful connections between information, an organism, which can find relevant information faster than any superhighway could ever do. The underlying principle has a social character and can be compared with the metaphor of weaving. The organism is weaving a Web 2.0. As the metaphor of Web 1.0 – the Superhighway – was primarily a reference to masculine obsessions, the new Web 2.0 refers to weaving, a feminine metaphor (Mirzoeff, 1999:110), and uses more social behaviours.

A more ethical responsible design also identifies the social character. Web 2.0 Websites are accessible for disabled people. This is made by a stronger use of web standards (O’Reilly, 2005:5) and simpler interfaces. Web standards bring a separation of Design, Programming and Information, which leads to a better readability of information by machines. The information is structured and not disturbed by not interpretable graphic-elements. This improves the use of Braille- and other forms of screen-readers, resulting in a better accessibility for disabled people. As this also helps to improve the search engine ranking, the ethical use is maybe not the main reason, but it always benefits it.

Simpler, and therefore easier to use, interfaces not just help disabled people to navigate through the Internet, it also benefits the average Internet user. As front-end interfaces become simpler the back-end also became easier to use. This means that users are not just limited to the role of a consumer; they can also publish their own content. The Web 2.0 makes publishing your own content a lot easier. There is no need of learning complex programming syntaxes or special applications. People can write directly while browsing the web and use an interface similar to those they’re used to, by their desktop word-processing applications. This dissolves the divide between consumers and publishers, and the Internet transforms from a mainly one-way broadcasting medium to a participation medium with real two-way communication. Christian Eigner identifies this form of communication as a process of »reading, writing, reading, writing«, a »semiotic movement«. (Eigner, 2003:123) It’s based on his observation of blogs, where users continually read content on websites, write about what they did read and continue reading. As this observation was made in 2002, it was before blogging techniques, like trackbacks, influenced other forms of websites, and became part of the Web 2.0. Now his observation of »reading, writing, reading, writing« is not longer limited to blogs, it is on the way becoming a part of the whole web. It illustrates how the users became an integral part of the, above identified, cybernetic organism, called Web 2.0.

This form of participation and the better accessibility for both, disabled and average users, generate the effects, which can lead to a different way of forming political opinions. As more people share their thoughts, more opinions to a specific topic are available. The better accessibility and the network effects mean that more people will find these opinions. But most important is, that these opinions are independent and from independent people. They cannot be as easily controlled as one-way media forms like television, radio & newspapers, which are owned and controlled by small group of people. The opinions are from uncountable single persons, who don’t publish their points of view for money, they just do it because of personal interest. As Erik Möller says in his book “The secret revolution of media”, the power of controlling the availability of information in a society shifts back from the media moguls and/or governments, to the people. This can be observed in China, where the government early realised the danger of a free and uncontrolled Internet to their repressive administration system. »In January 1998, the Chinese government created a wide range of Internet "crimes," such as engaging in political subversion and "defaming government agencies." These steps were taken even though there are officially only 49,000 host computers and 250,000 personal computers in China.« (Mirzoeff, 1999:106) The Chinese example also shows, that the Internet cannot be completely controlled. As stated in an article of the Guardian Weekly, February 24-March 2 2006, and according to a study by the Berkman Centre for Internet and society at Harvard Law School, the Chinese firewall does not work very well. There are too many websites to block. Especially blogs, or blogs as whole – the blogosphere – are uncontrollable, because of the huge number of diverse contributors. The Chinese government is afraid of free access to information, because this allows people to get information, which maybe doesn’t fit the provided information by the propaganda department.

These effects apply to every country, although mostly not that dramatically as in China. Every country does some sort of censorship, not always for repressive use, most do it to protect their citizens. In Germany, for example, it is forbidden by law to use symbols, which refer to the Third Reich and Nazism. The reason for this law is obvious – don’t let it happen again. In Australia you won’t see public references to it’s past as a kind of big prison. You will see information about the growing economy and other positive aspects of modern Australia. This is done to engender a more positive national identity. And the United States try to suppress information about killed soldiers in Iraq or even publish information to convince people that a war is necessary. All of these countries have one thing in common with China; all of them want to protect their status quo, as it is their political system, their preferred form of society or just the current government.

The problem is not necessary the reason why information is censored. The problem is if the formation of the public opinion is manipulated in a way that people can just get information which supports one, universal valid, opinion. It doesn’t matter if this opinion is right or wrong. People should always form an opinion, based on their personal consideration. This postulates diverse and independent information sources, which are not always provided through classic media. Classic media is often controlled by small group or even a single person, who decides which information is going to be published. The World Wide Web in version 1.0, seamed to be independent, but it wasn’t. Most information was provided by the same companies and news networks as it was in classic media. The companies tried to use the same principles and forgot to use the strength of the Web; it’s connectivity between different and independent sources. Therefore nothing really changed. But the Web 2.0 is going to be different. The central thinking is about connecting and sharing information with each other, to generate a better service through networking effects. Users are encouraged to share their opinions and knowledge and to think about what they read. The role of users changes from passive consumers, to active participants.

As every technologic development, the Web 2.0 has also its limits. As it is a part of the Internet, the primary problem is accessing it. Firstly, at least some sort of access needs to be available. And in most cases, it’s necessary to pay money. Those preconditions cannot everywhere be taken for granted. There are enormous differences between the developed world and poorer countries. As stated in the »World information Access 2006 Report«, »the supply of computers, Internet hosts and servers became more narrowly distributed in a core group of countries« and »people in developing countries pay more for internet access but get less«. (IT Business 05) But the Digital Divide is not limited to Third World countries; even in developed countries not everyone enjoys the same accessibility to the Internet. It depends always on income, which kind of access people get. Unlimited, so-called flat rate, access still costs a lot, and is therefore mostly used by the upper class of society. People of the lower class, are still depended on classic media for information purposes. They will still form their opinions based on the limited, and maybe manipulated information provided.

To conclude, the main objective of the Web 1.0 era was to create all-in-one websites suitable for every imaginable purpose with no need of links to other websites. Unconnected media-islands have been the result and the Information Superhighway has lost his exits. The most radical difference between Web 1.0 and 2.0 is the shift away from masculine and egoistic principles, forwards to more feminine and social principles. The metaphor of an Information Superhighway is replaced by a dense road network, which can be compared with an information-handling cybernetic organism. The Web is not just connecting computers with computers; it also connects the people using it, as they become a part of it. Ways of participation are becoming easier, and as more people participate, more information is available. Information that is independent, as governments or other organisations cannot easily control it. Independent and better access able information allows people to hear about a greater diversity of opinions on specific issues. Thus they have wider knowledge to form their own opinion. This opinion is not necessary different to the one they would have formed without this knowledge, but it is important that people form their opinions, based on personal consideration of diverse information sources. The techniques and principles of the Web 2.0 improve the Internet as a place for creating and providing these sources. The way of forming an opinion changes, because it is based on a better foundation.

Nevertheless these improvements benefit just the people who already can afford accessing the Internet. The digital divide is still an urgent issue and needs to be reduced as fast as possible in whichever part of the world it occurs.

Footnotes

• O’Reilly, Tim 2005, What is Web 2.0?, O’Reilly Blog, http://www.orreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html, (accessed 20 May 2006)
• http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web_20_compact_definition.html
• Christian Eigner, Fastbook 2, 2003