Taking back the web [News.com]

A News.com special report explores how a new generation, technologies return the net to its social roots.

The report, which is aimed at a broad audience, is organised in five chapters and provides an insight in the importance of grassroots opinions in the entertainment business and how wikis, tagging and mash-ups are changing the web.

The most interesting chapter however is the last one, which looks at the ‘millennials‘: a generation of children and teenagers who came of age at the dawn of the millennium. Members of this generation are thought to be adept with computers, creative with technology and, above all, are highly skilled at multitasking in a world where always-on connections are assumed. Their everyday lives are often characterised by immediate communication, via instant messenger, cellular conversations or text messaging. No member of this generation, it can be assumed, would ever wait on a street corner for a late friend.

The report can also be downloaded (pdf, 264 kb, 23 pages).