Women in Technology

Article:		What Is Web 2.0
Subject:		Wrong term - Stop using it
Date:		2007-03-26 10:04:09
From:		meshman
Please stop with the Web 2.0 term. It is entirely inaccurate. The Web is not the content. The web is a delivery platform for content. So by declaring Web 2.0 (how nice of you to do that for everyone), you're implying there is a whole new level of technology for what we call The Web. There isn't. We're still using IPv4. We're still using HTML, XML, javascript, PHP and every language we've always known for web development. I understand what "Web 2.0" is but the term is completely wrong for the above reason. Web 2.0 will be IPv6 and a host of converged, universal development, transport and hosting technologies. Not some social networking paradigm made up by people that don't understand how the Internet works. How is Internet banking Web 2.0? When will Microsoft come up with the "Web 2.0 Server"? Will there be a Web 2.0 version of Apache? No, because social networking and user rating aren't about the technology. They exist because of the technology. Those of us that actually work with the technology supported by this new paradigm are smacking our collective foreheads. You're holding up an apple and calling it an orange. Plus to make it worse, you're being applauded for it by people equally as ignorant about what the Internet is. Apples are not oranges. This social networking paradigm is not the next 'version of the web'. The term World Wide Web is universal. That which the term Web 2.0 refers to, is not. I don't mean this as a troll, I'm speaking from decades of experience in this technology. What you describe is NOT Web 2.0. Please stop corrupting what we all know to be standards and call it something else.

Showing messages 1 through 5 of 5.

• Wrong term - Stop using it
  2007-03-27 02:59:13  STaylor [View]
  
  
  Oh come on! I think you are being overpedantic. Whilst you are no doubt correct in a narrow techincal sort of a way, we need some sort of phrase to describe the new ways in which the web is now being used.
  
  Everyone knows what web 2.0 means and they realise it's not actually a new technology, but rather a new use of it.
  
  The term is now pretty well established and I very much doubt that your dislike of it will change anything.

• Wrong term - Stop using it
  2007-04-03 14:28:13  rimp [View]
  
  
  web is the web as you say
  and 2.0 means second in order NOT second version its just a second heading in a long list of changes :)

• Wrong term - Stop using it
  2007-04-05 18:31:45  sirmeili [View]
  
  
  I have to completely disagree, though I buy "Application 2.0" for my computer, it is most probably still written in the same language and requires the same platform to run on (windows,linux,mac,etc), much like web 2.0 requires the same technology (HTML,JS,CSS,etc) to run.
  
  The idea of "Web 2.0" is purely in the implementation of the technologies available, much like when an application increases its version when it finds new ways to implement new features using the same language as the previous version.
  
  And if its not "Web 2.0" I'd like to know what you call it. The web today is definitely not the same web it was 5, 10, or 15 years ago. It is ever evolving even if the backbone technology stays the same.

• Wrong term - Stop using it
  2007-04-30 08:19:30  NickC4555 [View]
  
  
  Web 2.0 is about people, not technology. Sure it needs innovative technologies to facilitate it, but they are just in a support role. meshman's post is the last gasp of the old technical guard who don't get that the web has been rested from them and is now a tool for communitities not techies.
  
  As was pointed out so eloquently in the Web 2.0 feature on this site, those of us with "decades of experience in this technology" are at a disadvantage, because of the baggage we enter the new world carrying. The winners in this race are already proving to be those organisations that have been designed from the ground up around the new paradigm.

• Wrong term - Stop using it
  2007-09-22 01:06:35  Mirai_Solutions_Phil [View]
  
  
  The use of a "web browser" has solidified that the content is in fact "the web" in the minds of the general public. But not to worry, because the term "internet" generally still refers to all the technological innovations that bring the content of the web to our displays. IPv6 and future developments to the internet will just need to be called Internet 2.0 instead.
  
  Web 2.0 isn't just social networking style websites, it's about data and content that is always changing and always growing. I tend to look more along the lines of the way the data is handled and modified rather than the content itself, and that has changed. If PHP was used to simply output a dynamic HTML page, the content of that page would remain the same without something to make it change. When PHP is connected to a constantly changing data source like a database, that content can be modified on the fly by whoever is handed the access to it. I believe that level of interactivity seperates the new ways of browsing the web from the old.
  
  Regards,
  Phil Kanaby