One of my personal favourite places on the internet is Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia that bills itself as the “Encyclopaedia that anyone can edit”. It is also the perfect exemplar of Web 2.0.(Lüers, 2007, p.54)
The World Wide Web, later dubbed Web 1.0, was created in 1990 by Tim Berners Lee while he was working at CERN in Switzerland (O'Regan, 2008. p.186). Initially envisaged as in information distribution system it was not interactive – people published pages and other people read them in the same publication model as a traditional paper-published document would be.
As the internet and with it the word wide web expanded through the 1990s it began to move away from this author and viewer model although there are still a great many pages and sites that are still this way. Retrospectively, models of limited interactions where users and producers communicate outside of emails, have been called Web 1.5. It began with business transactions (Lytras, Damiani and Ordóñez de Pablos, 2008. p2) and then expanded through forums and blogs.
Then, when social media arrived and two-way communication became the key Web 2.0 was born (Chatfield, 2008. p.23). Although social media were among the earliest and remain among the most prominent examples of Web 2.0, I'm going to focus now on another key website: Wikipedia.
The basic technology behind Wikipedia is the wiki – indeed so crucial is the software to the project that its very name is a portmanteau of it and “encyclopaedia” (Lüers, 2007. p.54). Wikis were invented by Ward Cunningham (Wenger, E., White, N. and Smith, J.D., 2010. p.19), and are websites that let users add, edit and modify their contents (Governor, J., Nickull, D. and Hinchcliffe, D., 2009. p.51). The name is derived from the Hawaiian “wiki wiki”, meaning “quickly, fast”. (Dictionary.com, 2011), chosen for the first ever wiki software “WikiWikiWiki”, referring to the speed with which content could be updated and published. (Governor, J., Nickull, D. and Hinchcliffe, D., 2009. p.51).
As Lüers says, "Wikipedia is an example for the basic functions of Web 2.0: without the user, Wikipedia would be a worthless website, but with their input, Wikiepdia has become one of the global top sites" (2007, p.54)
Wikipedia combines the wiki technology with the goal of producing an encyclopaedia. In contrast to the top-down approach employed by traditional reference works, Wikipedia is built from the ground up by editors (Governor, J., Nickull, D. and Hinchcliffe, D., 2009. p.51) – a defining aspect of Web 2.0. This user-driven content has proved to be somewhat of a culture shock for many used to the expert-driven works they're more used to (ibid), and is one of the reasons its reliability is poorly understood: there is no one single standard of how reliable Wikipedia is – it is only as reliable as the sources it cites. This means that far from trusting the single authoritative source to tell you the truth, be that a newspaper, book, the television or whatever, as was traditionally the case, Web 2.0 turns us from consumers into producers and simultaneously requires us to be our own editors.
As well us giving us great knowledge and great power, Web 2.0 has brought us the need to think and evaluate for ourselves, rather than blindly accept what we're told is true.
References:
Chatfield, Brian T. (2008) The MySpace.com handbook : the complete guide for members and parents. Ocala, Florida: Atlantic Publishing Group
Governor, J., Nickull, D. and Hinchcliffe, D. (2009), Web 2.0 Architectures. California: O'Reilly
Lüers, E. (2007) Web 2.0 and Audience Research. Norderstedt, Germany: GRIN Verlag.
Lytras, M.D., Damiani, E., Ordóñez de Pablos. P. (Eds.) (2008) Web 2.0: The Business Model. New York: Springer
O'Regan,G. (2008). A Brief History of Computing. 1st Edition. London: Springer.
Wenger, E., White, N. and Smith, J.D. (2010) Digital Habitats; Stewarding Technology for Communities. Portland, Oregon: CP Square
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