The magic of Web2.0

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke

The Internet era today personifies this quote. A couple of decades back, it would be been considered magical that with a click of a mouse anyone could become a journalist, a photographer, a DJ or a film editor. As one blogger comments, “Encouraged by Web-enabled sales, 175,000 books were published and more than 30,000 music albums were released in the US last year. At the same time, 14 million blogs were launched worldwide. All these numbers are escalating. A simple extrapolation suggests that in the near future, everyone alive will (on average) write a song, author a book, make a video, craft a weblog, and code a program. This idea is less outrageous than the notion 150 years ago that someday everyone would write a letter or take a photograph.”

Since the dot com boom and the subsequent bust, in the last two years we have seen the re-emergence or rather the re-evolution of the Internet in a new form. There is no one word or phrase which optimally captures the essence of this next way of Internet. However, the buzz word that has caught fancy the most is Web 2.0. Though yet fuzzy in definition, for lack of better word, that’s what I shall refer to the recent evolution of Internet as – Web2.0 and it is a development which has set my mind ticking like nothing else has in recent times.

An article I recently read summarizes fairly this recent phenomenon. It states: “driven by ubiquitous broadband, cheap hardware, and open-source software, the Web is mutating into a radically different beast than it has been. And that is leading to the creation of entirely new kinds of companies, new business models, and oceans of new opportunity”.

It almost seems that the Internet revolution in the early nineties saw a deluge of software applications and websites all trying to somehow cater to the whole world at the same time based on their perception of user needs. The current revolution is more mature in its approach and at the very core has the concept of software as a service. It is more open, less controlling and very democratic in its approach. For this first time, the web as it has been in the last two years has truly been information for the people, by the people. It is a lesson well learnt and owed in no small part to the invaluable dot com experience of the nineties. It is almost as if after the dot com decade, there was the proverbial ‘alcoholics moment of clarity’ where it dawned upon all that user empowerment and socio-cultural focus should be the drivers of technology if it has to have an impact on the life of a common man. Web2.0 has triggered a social phenomenon embracing an approach to generating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use. It is exactly in these socio-techno roots wherein the power of this surge lies!

From a purely technical perspective, Web2.0 seems to be getting a little better defined, formalized and less ambiguous by the day. The concept really is of using the Web as a platform and data as the driver. Web 2.0 suggests a Web-centric source for just about everything: information, entertainment, news, weather, stocks, reference, pod casts, videos and streaming media. The surge and success stories are all around with the notable ones being Google, MySpace, YouTube, Digg and Skype among many others.

I think that being a technical person who has been awe of the whole Internet revolution from the very beginning, it would have been virtually impossible for this new revolution not to affect me. It excites me no end to see the Web2.0 consolidating and building upon what exists but revolutionizing the whole model to be much more user focused. I believe that great things happen in a truly democratic environment. It is a truly flat world when a kid in Fiji can voice his opinion and influence someone in a suburban part of a town in western India. It is a true social network when I can re-connect with a friend from second grade after not being in touch for 25 odd years. It is a powerful society when readers determine what news and articles they want to read and also comment on it via the same media for everyone to read. Web2.0 gives us all this and its just a start. The world suddenly is like a popcorn machine with different flavored ideas popping up from all diverse parts of the world and the well cooked corn is dished out. The world as a consumer then gets to savor whatever flavor they like. Pioneers and supporters of the Web2.0 have expressed this idea by saying Web2.0 is about glocalization. It is about making global information available to local social contexts and giving people the flexibility to find, organize, share and create information in a locally meaningful fashion that is globally accessible.

The idea also excites me on a much more personal level as it means opportunity for me as for anyone else. It means that my long term dreams are more realizable thanks to this new face Internet. It means that the Internet as it is evolving today is the first ever ubiquitous, omnipresent, omnipotent, leveled platform on which I could potentially build something which could have the power to reach out to the whole world. It means that great leaders and personalities from our future generations will have a much wider impact. Can we imagine what it would have been to grow up in a world when we could listen to a live podcast from Mahatma Gandhi? Or witness Nelson Mandela 27 years imprisonment verdict? Or maybe we could have gathered enough critical mass of world wide protests to have reversed the verdict?

We could have grown up in a world where everyone in the world could be fortunate enough to relish my moms world famous ‘sai bhaaji (an Indian spinach based curry)’ by reading its recipe off her blog.

I am glad our children and future generations will and much more.

What they will not comprehend is that to me, it is nothing short of sheer magic. But then again, as the great Arthur Clarke noted, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic “