Oh, bad girl! I told myself I would do this North Texas 23 things and here I am already behind.
The hoopla around Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 is somewhat disquieting for me. I like the fact that the World Wide Web is getting back to its roots and people are doing what the Web was initially intended for, but calling it 2.0 is hype. Granted, maybe it's necessary hype. You have to understand that I've always used the Web to share and communicate. My problem has been that I was often all alone in posting content.
As a Webmaster for a non-profit association in the mid-90s, I was constantly pleading with my constituents for content and feedback. My effort often felt like an empty bowl—not of much use without something in it. I'd take Word documents, PDFs, e-mail messages, whatever I could get my hands on to create pages of informative content. Blasphemy, I'd even take printed brochures and type them into the computer to get useful materials—ugh.
This always reminds me of the Star Trek episode where the Enterprise visits a penal colony and discover that they are using a new device to put socially acceptable thoughts into the minds of the inmates. Toward the end of the episode, the "bad guy" gets left in the chair and there's no one talking to him, so he turns into a drooling idiot with an empty mind. Please, please won't someone give me content, something to think about, ideas to cogitate, material to turn into informative pages?!
I'm so glad that people are realizing how much more powerful electronic text is and are collaborating, uploading, sharing. To my mind, that's the whole point of the Web!
The hoopla around Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 is somewhat disquieting for me. I like the fact that the World Wide Web is getting back to its roots and people are doing what the Web was initially intended for, but calling it 2.0 is hype. Granted, maybe it's necessary hype. You have to understand that I've always used the Web to share and communicate. My problem has been that I was often all alone in posting content.
As a Webmaster for a non-profit association in the mid-90s, I was constantly pleading with my constituents for content and feedback. My effort often felt like an empty bowl—not of much use without something in it. I'd take Word documents, PDFs, e-mail messages, whatever I could get my hands on to create pages of informative content. Blasphemy, I'd even take printed brochures and type them into the computer to get useful materials—ugh.
This always reminds me of the Star Trek episode where the Enterprise visits a penal colony and discover that they are using a new device to put socially acceptable thoughts into the minds of the inmates. Toward the end of the episode, the "bad guy" gets left in the chair and there's no one talking to him, so he turns into a drooling idiot with an empty mind. Please, please won't someone give me content, something to think about, ideas to cogitate, material to turn into informative pages?!
I'm so glad that people are realizing how much more powerful electronic text is and are collaborating, uploading, sharing. To my mind, that's the whole point of the Web!
