ShareThisBy DAN FOST
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Behind the random silliness of YouTube videos and the juvenile frivolity of MySpace Web sites lies a powerful idea: Everyday people are using technology to gain control of the media and change the world.
At least that's what a new breed of Internet technologists and entrepreneurs want us to believe. The new Internet boom commonly referred to as Web 2.0 is really an exercise in digital democracy.
Dubbed Digital Utopians by some, and Web 2.0 innovators by others, this latest wave of tech gurus champion community over commerce, sharing ideas over sharing profits. By using Web sites that stress group thinking and sharing, these Internet idealists want to topple the power silos of Hollywood, Washington, Wall Street and even Silicon Valley. And like countless populists throughout history, they hope to disperse power and control, an idea that delights many and horrifies others.
Tim O'Reilly is the founder and chief executive of O'Reilly Media in Sebastopol, Calif., a tech publisher and event organizer who hung a name on the movement with his Web 2.0 Conference, which started Tuesday in San Francisco. In his manifesto on the movement last fall, O'Reilly wrote glowingly about "the wisdom of crowds" and the "architecture of participation."
Winners on the Internet "have embraced the power of the web to harness collective intelligence," O'Reilly wrote, populating "a world in which 'the former audience,' not a few people in a back room, decides what's important."
Indeed, millions of people each month visit social networking destinations like MySpace, online encyclopedias like Wikipedia and video-sharing sites like YouTube. Political groups like MoveOn.org have galvanized grassroots organizing. News aggregators like Digg.com have given editing power to readers. Combined, these Web sites have changed the landscape of countless industries and some have become worth billions.
They have also tapped a nerve, resonating with people who feel powerless to affect the major power structures.
The core of the Web 2.0 movement resurrects an age-old debate about governance and democracy, one that was argued by political philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Alexis de Tocqueville: Are the benefits of democracy _ taking advantage of what Web 2.0 proponents call the wisdom of the crowds _ worth risking the dark side of mob rule?
Chris Messina thinks so. Messina, 26, is a blogger, activist and "open-source evangelist," a charismatic geek spreading the notion of digital democracy.
"There is more potential today for individuals to change their destiny than there's been in ages," Messina said. "We need to get back to the idea that anyone can dream big and make it happen."
Like any popular movement, it also has its critics.
Andrew Keen warns against the dangers of embracing technology's level playing field. Keen, 46, a former professor and philosopher turned tech entrepreneur, published a tract this year, "Web 2.0 Is Reminiscent of Marx," and is working on a book lambasting "The Cult of the Amateur."
If people are absorbed with content created by fellow amateurs, Keen argues, will they ever know greatness? If bloggers disrupt mass media, will they follow journalistic rules of fairness? Can an army of amateur journalists adequately replace corporate news-gathering? Will sophomoric YouTube videos take the place of great films?
Keen dismisses what he calls the "militant and absurd" buzzwords of Web 2.0: Empowering citizen media, radically democratize, smash elitism, content redistribution, authentic community.
The notion of a Digital Utopia has been around since the early days of computing. Many of the industry's pioneers saw their machines as tools that could make life easier and unite humanity.
Some of the earliest successes on the Internet have an almost direct lineage to the liberal politics of the 1960s anti-war and civil rights movements. Former Merry Prankster Stewart Brand was the brains behind the Well, an early online community that took its name in part from his Whole Earth Review. New York Times technology reporter John Markoff argues in his book, "What the Dormouse Said," that the '60s counterculture played a pivotal role in shaping the personal computing industry.
The modern Digital Utopian uses the Internet constantly and extensively to share information and ideas at social networking sites and communities.
It all adds up to a shared experience, and a generally shared philosophy centered on technology and idealism. And where there is a point of view, a counterpoint is sure to emerge.
Oddly enough, the Utopians may become victims of their own success. While they advocate a world in which people can share content without concern for profit, much of what they are creating is becoming a tool of the corporate culture they decry.
MySpace, the most popular social networking site, is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. YouTube, which was built so that people could share their videos with each other, has been bought by Google. And even though Google's motto is "Don't be evil," it is a publicly traded company with a fiduciary duty to make money.
O'Reilly says this is the natural order of things.
He said the term came from the wreckage of the dot-coms several years ago. Even though many businesses folded, the Internet continued to grow, mature and become more indispensable.
Yet while people, perhaps reacting to the greed that fueled the IPOs of the dot-com years, saw in Web 2.0 a chance to create a new collectivism, O'Reilly said, "I don't see it that way at all."
Web 2.0, he says, is about business.
He says many tech movements start out with similar idealism, only to give way to capitalism. For instance, O'Reilly says, Napster introduced file sharing, but now iTunes has people comfortable with paying for music online.
"You do a barn raising at a particular stage of society," he said, "and then the developers come in. ... It always happens that way."
