Web 2.0: technology for the new generation. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

• Author: Colby, Kent L.
• Position: TECHNOLOGY

"Social: relating to the way in which people in groups behave and interact. Living or preferring to five as part of a community or colony rather than alone. Allowing people to meet and interact with others in a friendly way." Online Encarta Dictionary: English.

Where does socialization fit in cyberspace? Are we becoming more social in the world of social networking tools? Networking in this sense is that of "www" or the World Wide Web. Web sites are incorporating Web 2.0 elements into the online publications, but the name Web 2.0 implies new technology or a new generation of design for the Internet.

WEB 2.0

The term Web 2.0 was first used to name a conference in 2004. It was not a suggestion that there is or was a new version of the Web. Conference organizers wanted to bring focus to the importance of Web and that the Web mattered. The intent was to rejuvenate the Web after the paranoia and concerns following dot-com crash. Today, however, the term is evolving from the name of a conference to tangible Web-based applications and even a doctrinal attitude about the use of the Web and its components. The complex, ever-changing technology that is attributed to Web 2.0 is a conglomeration of applications that have been a part of the Web from the beginning: early protocols and applications that are rich-internet techniques, such as the familiar Adobe Flash and Java, as well as AJAX, Flex, Curl, and Silverlight. Web sites developed under the broad class of Web 2.0 applications mimic desktop applications like word processing, spreadsheets, and Power Point-like slide-show presentations. The sites function less like the traditional operating system and more as an application platform. Web 2.0 is not, as the name implies, new architecture. Nor is it any single OS or application. Web 2.0 encompasses applications built on the existing Web server acchitecture that rely on back-end software, the all encompassing term does not necessarily represent a new version of the World Wide Web. It can be argued that it is a continuation of existing technologies and concepts. It can be said that Web 9.0 is what the Web was supposed to be all along.

Since that first conference, it is obvious the when that bubble burst, it did not collapse the Web; far from it. Today's Web is more important than ever. Applications and sites are popping up all over and with more zest than ever.

Compare some examples as outlined by www.oreillynet.com:

* Britannica Online vs. Wikipedia

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