Yes, Russell, There is a Web 2.0
The other day, fellow ZDNet blogging colleague Russell Shaw wrote:
"Web 2.0? It doesn't exist. No, I am not turning into a "flat-earther." The world is pear-shaped, Pluto is not a planet, and global warming exists. But Web 2.0 does not exist. The advances being touted under the general umbrella of Web 2.0... well, of course those advances exist. RSS, Social Media, content aggregation, podcasting, you have it. My problem is not with the characterization of the components of Web 2.0. It is the implication inherent in the very livery, 'Web 2.0,' that I just don't get."
(With apologies to Francis P. Church...)
Russell, you and your colleagues have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. In this great Internet of ours, end users are but mere insects, ants, in their intellect as compared with the boundless networks about them, as measured by the intelligence that resides across all our interconnected databases.
Yes, Russell, there is a Web 2.0. It exists as certainly as VoIP, Weblogs, and search engines exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Web 2.0!
Not believe in Web 2.0! You might as well not believe in Wikipedia and AJAX. The most real things in the world are those that neither end-users nor bloggers can see. Did you ever see marketers dancing on their chairs? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they don't do so. And that's what they're doing as they discover all the potential new sales they can make by rebranding their products as Web 2.0 compliant. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
No Web 2.0! A thousand years from now, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, it will continue to make glad the hearts of vendors and end-users.