Berners-Lee calls for Web 2.0 calm [The Register]

Bernerslee
Five years after the first internet bubble burst, we’re now witnessing the backlash against Web 2.0 and a plethora of me-too business plans, marketing pitches and analyst reports exploiting the nebulous phrase.

Tim Berners-Lee, the individual credited with inventing the web and giving so many of us jobs, has become the most prominent individual so-far to point out that the Web 2.0 emperor is naked. Berners-Lee has dismissed Web 2.0 as useless jargon nobody can explain and a set of technology that tries to achieve exactly the same thing as “Web 1.0.”

According to this transcript, Berners-Lee was reacting to an IBM developerWorks pod cast interviewer who’d categorized Web 1.0 as connected computers and making information available, and Web 2.0 as connecting people and facilitating new kinds of collaboration. Those who remember the empowering effects of Netscape and the moment email became more than just borrowing your mate’s CompuServe account at work will also recognize such blanket assertions of historical revisionism for what they are.

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