Monday, January 5, 2009

What's beyond Web 2.0, 2.0



The essence of Web 2.0, I think, is expressed the best by the poster above from Despair, Inc. (hope they don't mind some hotlinking for extra exposure):

Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.

I wonder what will happen when the realization will come that the only thing Web 2.0 has achieved is just amplified the noise and changed its nature. Before, it was difficult to get to good ideas because of transmission noise. Now, it is difficult to get to good ideas because of background noise.

Nothing changed, really.

UPDATE: Initially, this post was quite different, main topic being the introduction of Google Product Ideas. I decided to abandon it because it was turning out too acidic, but then, when I was catching up with feeds after New Year's blackout, I found this: Google Wants You To Be Its Unpaid Muse. My slant is different, however: they're talking about fair compensation, I'm talking about wading through neck deep pool of crappy ideas generated by countless nincompoops.

I'm highly skeptical about the eventual usefulness of this service. Reason being, if you make a smart person come up with something, they do. If you make them ruminate endlessly over someone else's ideas, they cease to be smart - this is a routine job that is better for someone with OCD.

Interim effect is even more interesting - this is exactly the kind of tool that's been described by Philip K. Dick in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Immediate power of immediate choice. Scary.

UPDATE: And more along the same lines: Where's That Line Between True Democracy And Mob Rule?

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