Crossroads

I'm reading Tim O'Reilly's positioning statement on Web 2.0 and preparing for a conversation with John Battelle for Monday's Attention Tech broadcast on Sirius. The show, a collaboration with Mike Vizard (formerly of CRN), debuted Thursday the 29th on Sirius 103, together with Podshows from Adam Curry, Madge Weinstein, Dawn and Drew, and others. You can hear it at 5PM Pacific/8PM Eastern. We'll be releasing the casts on the Net as soon as I get the time to arrange for a site. In the meantime I may post them on Gillmor Daily.

Tim's piece is timely, measured, and anchored by an important nod to the history of RSS and Dave Winer's role. Battelle's book, The Search, is a methodical but subtly lyrical detective story about the rise of Google. Together, Battelle and O'Reilly are approaching a mature plateau from which Battelle is launching his FM Publishing startup and O'Reilly a new wave of what Tim calls the Age of Participation. I'll be looking to Ray Ozzie's talk as an indication of both what role Microsoft will play in the Web's reboot and whether the politics of cooperation will be built out across once-fractious lines.