In my previous post, I had mentioned an online revolution known as web 2.0 and I had only created a directed edge from this blog to the wikipedia page. While I was reading one of my subscribed blogs, Presentation Zen, I stumbled across this post which shows how text can be used for an effective video presentation. One of the videos (the other videos are all good, especially the first Pulp Fiction one) tries to explain web 2.0 in a different way- video text.

Watch it here

The message is simple: the web is no longer just linking information- web 2.0 is linking people.

If you click onto the Youtube link, the author has given the title of his video: “The web is us/ing us.”

In class we have begun to discuss how web sites hyperlink with each other and a low estimate of 10B sites was tossed out there. It is already impossible to imagine what that network looks like. But now, try adding people in for nodes as well.

The basis for the authors claims is simple. XML facilitates data exchange. When people organize web data through photos (flickr), blogs, videos (youtube), and bookmarks (del.icio.us and digg), they are forming a database-backed web.

When we tag and post pictures… we are teaching the Machine… Each time we forge a link… we teach it an idea…

The web is no longer just linking information; Web 2.0 is linking people. Therefore, we are in control and we’ll need to rethink ourselves and the data we are putting online, which will, invariably, be linked back to us.