Lesson 6 – Technology’s taking over and you gotta know what you’re dealing with!
Okay, STOP the press!
This lecture has brought to light a possibly ground breaking piece of information that most people are not fully aware of. There is not just one “web”. Apparently, there are THREE!
Firstly, I am shocked not to have been informed of the changes and or/upgrades that affect a medium I use multiple times a day such as the web. On top of this I am told that with the development of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, there may be more pressing matters at hand.
So, what exactly are Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0? What do the changes between each of these web development phases mean for news, journalism and communication of modern society in general?
For some rock solid definitions I went straight to modern man’s source of all knowledge – Wikipedia:
Web 1.0: Web 1.0, or web, refers to the first stage of the World Wide Web linking webpages with hyperlinks.
Web 2.0: Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumers) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mash-ups and folksonomies.
Web 3.0: Futurist John Smart, lead author of the Metaverse Roadmap defines Web 3.0 as the first-generation Metaverse (convergence of the virtual and physical world), a web development layer that includes TV-quality open video, 3D simulations, augmented reality, human-constructed semantic standards, and pervasive broadband, wireless, and sensors.
STILL CONFUSED? HERE’S THE WAY I SEE IT…
Web 1.0: Web focused on the one way flow of information, information privacy valued.
Web 2.0: Increased popularity of the web, focused on a two way flow of information - characterised by social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and interaction between participants of web communities with value placed on the sharing of information.
Web 3.0: User focused, highly linked to personal and target focused advertising. Much internet use assumed with information gathered from previous web searches and internet activity. Information privacy non-existent with information considered a very valuable commodity.
“Web 3.0 is a web where the computer is generating new information, rather than humans.” - Conrad Wolfram
Now I don’t know about you, but my mind went straight to the ‘Terminator’. Although nothing that absurd would happen (knock on wood), we have to admit that technology is in a sense ‘taking over’.
Terry Flew, in his 3rd Edition of New Media, summarized his view of the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 as the:
"move from personal websites to blogs and blog site aggregation, from publishing to participation, from web content as the outcome of large up-front investment to an ongoing and interactive process, and from content management systems to links based on tagging (folksonomy)".
This statement is becoming more and more relevant with a growing number of people participating in blogging on one, or often numerous personal web pages. The journalism course for which I have created this blog is a prime example of this phenomenon.
The development in the worldwide web is realistically affecting and altering the way we consume our news and consequently the face of journalism as a whole. Today, many breaking news stories are first seen on social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter and Web 2.0 is becoming a larger and more integral part of worldwide communication.
But what will all of this mean for news as we know it?
The development in technology will affect news at both a local and global level. The hyper-localisation* that comes with Web 3.0 could be both a blessing and a curse for society. Focusing specific content delivery people will be delivered the news which is deemed (through previous internet activity) to matter to them. This “news my way” phenomenon is positive in the fact that people can find out about issues that are relevant to them personally. However, some fear that this may lead to ignorance and a lack of general knowledge if the public are not engaging with any general news.
The personalisation of the web goes hand in hand with advertising. “Neuro-marketing”, as it’s known was recently covered on “The Gruen Transfer” and is really quite an interesting concept:
IN CONCLUSION, this week we’ve found out a lot about the ever-evolving web and how it relates to the audience on a number of levels.
The main thing to take away from it all in my opinion – don’t be spoon-fed when it comes to the news you consume online, source your news from as many different outlets as possible. It will broaden your world views, increase your general knowledge and (possibly most importantly) keep potential journalists like myself in the job!
*Hyper localisation - The adjective hyperlocal describes journalism which focuses on a very specific, local area. Hyperlocal news is much narrower, relating to a suburb or even a particular group of streets. Unlike the mainstream media, which conventionally looks at issues of regional, national and global concern, hyperlocal news covers topics of more restricted interest, such as street repairs or health inspection results for a nearby restaurant.
*Meta-tags - A meta tag is a tag (that is, a coding statement) in the Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) that describes some aspect of the contents of a Web page. The information that you provide in a meta tag is used by search engines to index a page so that someone searching for the kind of information the page contains will be able to find it.
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