Web 2.0 The machine is Us/ing us

This is a video that Dr. Zappala showed in class a while ago but when i was researching more about the subject of Web 2.0 i found it again. i thought it was a really great representation of what we are talking about here.
what i found most fascinating about the concept of Web 2.0 is that the web has become much more than just a way of "getting information".  instead the web has exploded into a user directed method of creating  information. i'll go through the six points from Jim O'Reilly's article and explain more of my thoughts:

1. User Generated content: The traditional methods of education seem to always include a "credible source" as means of retreiving information. only the brittainica's, webster's, and peer reviewed's of the world could stand as credible sources. but no longer with web 2.0. now it is us, the user, who is empowered to teach the world what we know. and now it is up to the other users to decide what is credible and what isn't. Also, my economic mind has a hard time grappling with why people would do things without economic incentive but after a while i realized the true power of other motivation as O'Reilly points out: "People are driven by monetary motives at the head, but the coin of the realm at the lower end of the tail is reputation’ (p. 73). We are living in more of an exposure culture, where ‘getting noticed is everything’ (Tim Wu, Professor of Law, in Anderson, 2006, p. 74)."

2. Harness the power of the crowd: when i first began studying digital civilization i didn't really grasp the power of croudsourcing. but then one day it just clicked. Why do something tedious (or anything for that matter) on your own when you can have lots of others do it for you? it just makes so much sense. i think the internet at the beginning didn't really harness that power but it is an increasingly essential part of web 2.0.

3. Data on an epic scale: this is my original idea of the internet on steroids. yes the internet is a place to gather information, but it isn't just information, it is A LOT of information. all the better. one stat i thought was particularly startling was how much data Google, just one company, has: "Google now has a total database measured in hundreds of peta- bytes17 which is swelled each day by terabytes of new information. This is the network effect working at full tilt." that is crazy. is there and end to the data we can amass?

4. Architecture of Participation: this one is my favorite because i think it is so genius. Apps and services use the feedback from a high scale of users to improve the way it works. To the unsuspecting user this seems like it is merely benefiting him but the machine and the masses are being benefited equally. who would have thought that man and machine would be in such a symbiotic relationship? our previous perspectives would lead us to believe that machines are for our benefit only. this is an interesting new perspective.

5. The Network Effect: "The Network Effect is a general economic term used to describe the increase in value to the existing users of a service in which there is some form of interaction with others, as more and more people start to use it " There are several services that only have value because of the networking opportunities it affords. for example, would you use facebook if you were the only one of your friends on it? absolutely not. and these networking sites and tools are the face of web 2.0.

6. Openness: this is an essential part of web 2.0. we are empowered as the user to know how to use, change, and share anything over the internet. the more restrictions that are put on this the less effective our interactions with the web and each other will be. for more information on openness, visit my other blog posts: information wants to be free, open government, and free software.