Future of Web and Information Structures

This was all news to me, though maybe lots of you more with-it folks out there know all about this. My Information Outlook, December, 2005, vol. 9, no. 12, column by Stephen Abram, pp. 44 - 46: Web 2.0 - Huh?! Library 2.0, Librarian 2.0 brought me up to speed on a lot of developments that I had been seeing as separate items. Abrams pulls RSS feeds, Wikis, Blogs, Podcasting, and more into a single trend which looks very exciting and interesting. He sees these as parts of a development in the Web, Web 2.0, a conversation, not a standard or even necessarily a computing platform. This is a new, decentralized architecture and social phenomenon that will be driving global computing and information structures.

You can see the article, for more details, and also some fascinating websites that he refers to, which make it clear how far behind these developments I am!

Wikipedia article on Web 2.0, coined Oct., 2004
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Even farther out of date! The Cluetrain Manifesto (don't miss its entertaining Gluetrain Manifesto spin-off), from 1999, about knowledge and hierarchy systems changing on the Internet and how companies and employers have to change -- yikes!

http://cluetrain.com/index.html#manifesto

And finally, I don't have to be quite so ashamed, the Croquet Project to build a highly distributed and interactive computing platform:

http://www.opencroquet.org/

If you were uncomfortable with Wikipedia and blogs and podcasting, you had better hold onto your hat! These seem to just be the beginnings. The students coming along are pushing and pressing and we will go or be left behind, I think. This is going to be very interesting! This image of roadkill on the information highway is courtesy of the cluetrain manifesto guys -- how uncomfortable! Hooray for SLA, they always keep me on my toes.