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Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 5:50 pm
by Bill H
My only problem with the article is that it had too many words.

(Like the king who said that Mozart's music had too many notes. The king was and idiot and soo too, probably, am I.)

But, for what it's worth, I was having a hard time wading through the article's sheer mass of verbiage. What I was able to extract from it, and from the blessedly more concise writing of the posters to this thread, is an interesting and illuminating concept that made me see the web in a new and somewhat more clear manner.

But was tim O'Reilly getting paid by the word, or what?

Not a nice post, I know, but it is what I really think

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2006 12:51 am
by Gambler
I think its unfortunate, as Web 2.0 is (to me) considerably different than you are making it out to be.
In the O'Reilly's article web 2.0 is described as a concept that encompasses several web technologies. Some of them I use daily. I google, I read Wikipedia, I don't mind AJAX sites. I'm not against those things, because they are just things. But, as I already pointed out, he sells us new lifestyle and mentality.

Image
Note the bubble on the left that says "an attitude, not technology". That I don't like, because I generally don't like any attempts to control the way people think or feel. Using Tim's own style, I would draw something like this:

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brainwasing  -->  persuasion
Why do I use the word "brainwashing"? Many reasons. One of them is the style of the article. Author claims to explain what Web 2.0 means, but his explanation almost immediately turns into a long-winded essay of a sort, a praise, a literary monument for the concept. Another reason would be that O'Reilly tries very hard to connect this concept with various "cool kids" of internet. Google, BitTorrent, Wikipedia, "Blogs", AJAX... The relationship between all those companies, technologies, and forces of the web is so elusive, that I cannot tell with any certainty that it at all exists. Of course we can still gaher them under a single alias, but it really could be anything: Web 2.0, eCommunism, Shimerlswaitchhop.

I have to admit, though, that Web 2.0 sounds nicer than the other two. At the same time it's a bit troubling, because 2.0 assumes something more advanced, something better. Better then what? Web 1.0, of course. To enforce this impression Tim boldly uses arrows.

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DoubleClick  	-->  	Google AdSense
What a vivid image! It immediate makes clear where is the future and where is the past, and what side do you want to be on. Although, I would not be too quick about accepting this advice just yet, because the article itself is hosted on the site that shows DoubleClick ads. Maybe, this little diagram was not meant the way I understand it. But then, why all the arrows and notion of "Web 2.0 era"? Let's look at some other transitions O'Reilly either envisions or suggests.

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content management systems  	-->  	wikis
Wikis are "beter" than CMSes? I doubt that you can compare those two just like that. Not only their approaches to managing information are drastically different, but their goals are as well. Yes, some sites might benefit from having a wiki, but those are hardly the majority.

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publishing  	-->  	participation
Another strange contrast is drawn between personal webpages and blogs. For some reason the latter are said to facilitate publishing, while the former encourage participation. Even though there are many paragraph in the article about those two processes, the difference between them is vague. Wikipedia might be a good example of user participation, but I would not say the same thing about blogs.

So, what is the pattern here? How about this one: in one way or another all of these "2.0" things happen to rely on certain kind of technologies. The kind that O'Reilly Media publishes books about. Good books, by the way. Have six of them myself. But it's not the point. The point is that, maybe, this article is an attempt to advertise certain things in a moderately non-obvious way. Maybe it was meant to boost the epidemics of viral advertisement Tim is so fond of. This would not mean that everything in the text is false and wrong, but... Heck, it's enough for me to dislike it as it is.
I shouldn't have replied.
Great way of getting out of argument you started and don't want to continue. Stick to the rules. Just pretend that you are horribly offended/dissapointed and say that you opponent is troll. It's not calling names, it's different.
I sincerely hope
Nope, you don't.

"incorrect"
"OP had misunderstood"
"your issues"
"your misunderstanding"
"I shouldn't have replied"
"its unfortunate"
"you are making it out to be"
"thinly veiled troll to attack"

After this word "sincere" gets horribly out of context. Nice little way of being a jerk, too. Clean and shiny, no bad words, netiqeutte is maintained. Ok, my turn. I honestly tried to explain my POV, but you don't seem to like to discuss things. Showing off as a great political scholar is more fun, eh?
We don't agree on even the most basic definitions of communism
Your knee-jerk reaction to the word surpassed all expectations. But the real problem is that you don't want to understand what I'm writing, because it's inconvenient. I'm not saying that my posts are 100% clear in all aspects, far from it, but you don't really try to go beyound words, and look at the meaning. You ask questions only to get more information that could prove that your opponent is wrong/idiot/bad guy.

This is not a thread-argument about political theories of Carl Marx. ECommunism was just a term used as an illustration of another concept. And I told you that, but you didn't see the connection. Then I showed you the connection, but you ignored it and played the universal troll card. This crap starts to tick me off. Is it so much simpler to divide world into black and white, proponents and opponents, than really try to listen?
troll
Oh no, it isn't. You see, sometimes people want to discuss stuff they don't like. And some people don't like some Bush law, while I happen to dislike some O'Reilly article. That doesn't automatically make our posts illegal or bad, even if you don't like the fact that we don't like something.

Of course you can continue to do the same shtuff, follow the protocol. Say something about me being insecure, immature, whatever. Say that it's "regrettable". Say that you are going to ignore this thread/me right after you post this one last message to show everyone that you are indeed ingnoring this thread/me and not doing something else. Or you can just do something else. Your choice. [Hint: explaining why do you think the article makes a valid point about that cool web 2.0 might help.]

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2006 3:32 am
by m3mn0n
Bill H wrote:My only problem with the article is that it had too many words.

(Like the king who said that Mozart's music had too many notes. The king was and idiot and soo too, probably, am I.)

But, for what it's worth, I was having a hard time wading through the article's sheer mass of verbiage. What I was able to extract from it, and from the blessedly more concise writing of the posters to this thread, is an interesting and illuminating concept that made me see the web in a new and somewhat more clear manner.

But was tim O'Reilly getting paid by the word, or what?
heh

I have to agree with you here. I call this sort of thing verbal diarrhea.

I bet that could have been written in less than half of the words.

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2006 8:29 am
by feyd
locked. Trolling.