Liz Hart

Introduction

This chapter will provide a brief overview of the technological changes and developments that have enabled Web 2.0 to happen and, more importantly, some of the individual and social changes that have come about as a result. The general impact of Web 2.0 will be evaluated mainly in the context of the role of libraries and the information professional.

There is frequently little agreement about what Web 2.0 constitutes even though it has been around for five years. Arguably, the most definitive paper appeared in 2005 from Tim O’Reilly (2005). In ‘What is Web 2.0?’ he postulates commencement of Web 2.0 from the bursting of the dot.com bubble in 2001. In a conference brainstorming session in 2003 it was concluded that the web was still vital and at some kind of ‘turning point’, which justified the adopting of the Web 2.0 term. By default, and rather unsurprisingly, this has tended to mean that what came before Web 2.0 is referred to at Web 1.0.

Change and connectivity

Web 2.0 is a process where technological change is allowing new ways of dynamic interaction and participation. Like most changes this is having a gradual but significant, and frequently highly visible, impact. This process of change is powered by three main factors:

Bill Sharpe has summarised the change in a chapter on the ambient web in Becta’s Emerging Technologies for Learning:

This connectivity enables the web to become a platform for activity of all kinds. O’Reilly has produced a meme map, which attempts, quite successfully, to visualise Web 2.0 and many of the impacts and opportunities connect to the concept (Figure 7.1).

This map offers not only a summary of some of the ideas and concepts within Web 2.0 but also clearly shows some of the opportunities and challenges. It is not easy for anyone used to the Web 1.0 environment to consider the idea of software in a state of constant beta, which improves the more people use it and the more it ‘learns’ from that usage. The idea of users employing their own free text tagging in services such as Flickr or Delicious rather than any predetermined taxonomy could be regarded as a threat, but is clearly also an opportunity for the information professional. In fact, subsequent to the development of the concept of Web 2.0, there has developed the term Library 2.0. A good explanation of this can be found in an article by those credited with being the first to use the term, Michael Casey, and Laura Savastinuk (Casey and Savastinuk, 2006). Wikipedia defined Library 2.0 in this way:

It is important that the technological developments that have enabled these opportunities to occur are clearly recognised, if only to perceive and understand what might be coming next. What are the key differences between Web 2.0 and what went before (the so called Web 1.0)? The major difference lies in the concept of what is delivered. In Web 1.0 are the products and companies such as Microsoft and Oracle, which produce reliable and recognisable software with specific licensing, sales and release schedules. Products provided by the Web 2.0 companies do not follow this pattern and are in essence a form of service. They grow and develop through a process of continuous improvement and customers pay either directly or indirectly for the service provided. The customers also become an integral part of the development cycle and success. As O’Reilly summarises: ‘There is an implicit “architecture of participation”, a built in ethic of cooperation, in which the services acts primarily as the intelligent broker, connecting the edges to each other and harnessing the power of the users themselves’ (Sharpe, 2006).

The power of the user

The idea of harnessing the power of users is critical to an understanding of Web 2.0. For the first time people can establish their own individual, personal data and information and, if they choose, make it available to others. This has created what has been referred to by Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as a ‘participatory culture’ (Jenkins, 2006), of which more later in this chapter. Much of the power of the web is based around the ability to hyperlink, essentially because this enables the information discovery process to be not only individualised but also actively offered to others as a potential route for their own use.

Some companies actively exploit this user activity to produce a better ‘product’. Amazon is a good example of this: it actively seeks user input, reviews and comment, which adds value to the ‘product’ and also establishes a sense of ownership and participation to exist for their customers. Amazon also uses customer search activity to produce better and more helpful results, for example, by always leading with those that are the ‘most popular’. This technique also personalises the data and information – an approach which is essential to the understanding of Web 2.0. Once this personalisation, sense of ownership and dynamic participate are understood, it is relatively straightforward to understand why folksonomies such as Delicious and Flickr have emerged so rapidly.

Folksonomies are entirely based on users (participants) providing information and data and then categorising that information. Users (or participants) employ freely chosen terms, which are flexible and not preordained. Although the challenges of such an approach are obvious to an information professional, so are the advantages and opportunities. The user is generating how information and resources are retrieved – or indeed how they are lost! This could be regarded as an information revolution in the true sense of the word. Flickr tags allow searchers to find images concerning a certain topic such as a place name or subject matter. The service was also an early adopter of tag clouds, which provide access to images tagged with the most popular keywords. In addition users are encouraged to organise their images into sets or groups that fall under the same heading. However, sets are more flexible than more traditional methods as they can belong to one set, many sets or none at all. These sets represent a form of categorical metadata rather than a physical hierarchy. There is also considerable potential to achieve semantic as well as the subject or term categorisation of information. The service also reflects, perhaps more appropriately, how ‘ordinary people’ retrieve information for themselves. This naturally leads to multiple retrieval opportunities and also potentially that similar information may not necessarily be as ‘connected’ as it might be… but surely this is where information professionals can play a key role?

Trust and do it yourself

Unsurprisingly these developments have gained the name ‘do it yourself’ technologies. Probably the best know of these is Wikipedia. Significantly, in the context of Web 2.0, the word wiki means ‘quick’ in Hawaiian. Wikis are websites that allow users or participants to add, edit and delete content. They were originally conceived to allow a group of participants, such as those involved in a research project, to work collaboratively and dynamically together. However, Wikipedia goes one step further as an online encyclopaedia, which allows any registered user to contribute. It is therefore compiled, edited and re-edited by ‘people’, and although there is an element of moderation, it essentially relies on good will, trust and peer assessment and evaluation.

The ‘trust’ elements of this are new and radical, the technology something of a sideline. If you consider the meme map produced by O’Reilly (2005) (Figure 7.1), this brings the description of Web 2.0 as ‘an attitude not a technology’ to life. This is an idea echoed by Stephen Fry (author and broadcaster) who is quoted by Wikipedia as indicating that in his view Web 2.0 is:

Whether real or not, the advantages and dynamic applicability of such a participatory product are clear. Wikipedia preeminently recognises that information does change and that ‘facts’ alter with new discoveries. The content of such a product is not fixed and is always open to challenge and change. The opportunities for error, for misinformation, exist, but so does the need for information professionals to proactively participate. Finally it is significant that Wikipedia is now formally acknowledged as one of the most popular websites in the world.

This argument that Web 2.0 is not real has been echoed by some technical experts. Tim Berners Lee has questioned whether we can use the term in any meaningful way since many of the technological components of Web 2.0 have existed since the early days of the web (Wikipedia, 2010). However, the key to Web 2.0 is participation and use of those tools.

Synthesis

How does all this information link together on the web? The ubiquitous technology that underpins much of the web is Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Essentially this is used to syndicate news and website content across the web by making it machine readable. Users who subscribe to an RSS enabled website can have content ‘pushed’ to them automatically via RSS aggregators or news readers. The most obvious and practical applications of this technology are already widely in use for educational purposes, for current financial information, for weather or for tourism. This ‘push’ technology is another key element of Web 2.0 and again it depends on dynamic user participation. Users not only link to the website personally but are then dynamically notified on each occasion the web page changes. Skrenta (2005) has called this the ‘incremental web’. A parallel development is the use of permalinks – an apparently trivial piece of technology, which permits the establishment of a permanent link to a sentence, paragraph or word within a web page. The permanent link that is established to the item allows you to add your own comments, and discussion, argument and ‘chat’ emerge. These technologies have come to be commonly referred to by some as ‘web feed’ technologies.

This represents the real power of participatory communities, which are beginning to have a huge social, economic and business impact. In Wikinomics (2006), Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams show how masses of people can participate in the economy and the potential impacts of this global collaboration for businesses and the global economy. In their view collaboration changes everything and by ‘people’ acting together what will result is what they refer to as ‘economic democracy’. Companies are all planning how they will exploit, market and compete in this new business environment. One of the key areas is integrated communications where existing e-mail, mobile phone and Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) will be combined. Significantly, Microsoft has already launched a strategy for unified communications, which will concentrate on streamlining and simplifying communication tools and enhancing dynamic collaboration, particularly for business.

The smart web

Essentially the new Web 2.0 communication tools have the capability to ‘learn’ about people. This obviously has serious ethical issues, which will need to be appropriately and firmly addressed, but if properly managed it also has huge opportunities. From an information professional’s perspective, information can be selectively ‘pushed’ to users based on context and location, matching the user’s immediate needs and interests just at the right time. This ‘just in time’ approach to the provision of information contracts with the traditional ‘just in case’ paradigm represented by most libraries. The power to profile users will enable retrieval capability from all available digital environments to be selectively maximised and the information dynamic delivered through mobile devices, PCs or portals – all based on personalised and individual (and by assumption different) needs. For perhaps the first time, there may be answers to the questions: ‘Who are your users?’ and ‘How do they behave in the digital environment?’. As a result of such developments information professionals can be some of the leaders in the proactive provision of information.

Delivery and provision of information is enabled to change but it will not be possible to exploit such situations without a shift in attitude, approach and perhaps also skills. The MacArthur Foundation has launched a five-year digital and learning initiative to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialise and participate in civic life. In an occasional paper that has emerged from this initiative 11 new skills and literacies have been established, including:

Skills full circle

Jenkins’ argument is that ‘textual literacy remains a central skill in the 21st century’ and that in this context the traditional research skills ‘assume an even greater importance as students venture beyond collections that have been screened by librarians to the more open space of the web’. These conclusions complement a similar theme in a work by David F. Warlick, which examines a redefinition of literacy (Warlick, 2007). Warlick’s premise is that as technology becomes more and more embedded and an integral part of daily life it will be necessary fundamentally to reconsider what is meant by literacy. His view is that ‘if our children learn to read they will not be literate’. Jenkins also recognises real and substantial challenges in what he refers to as the participation gap: the transparency problem and the ‘ethics challenge’.

The term ‘participation gap’ has been used for some time to describe the unequal access to opportunities, skills and knowledge experienced by young people in preparation for participating in the world of tomorrow. Although Jenkins uses it in relation to young people, there is also a participation gap among the poor and the elderly. Jenkins uses ‘transparency problem’ to describe the challenge for young people in seeing clearly the ways in which media shape perceptions of the world. Finally, he uses ‘ethics challenge’ to explain the breakdown of the traditional ways young people are prepared for public roles.

Concluding remarks

All these are challenges, not just for the young, and they are all areas where an information professional can and does make a difference by the active application of professional skills and knowledge. Libraries from all sectors are making a difference with the support and training in information literacy. Public and academic libraries in particular see this as one of their key services and thereby tacitly acknowledge that without such skills their users potentially face disenfranchisement.

In a CILIP conference keynote speech, Lynne Brindley outlined the essential need for a change of approach and attitude in the information age. Her argument was that as people in the developed world freely create information and digital data of all kinds, the web can be overwhelming: ‘We are both dis-intermediated and needed as never before’ (Brindley, 2007).

We can see that the information and learning landscape is changing rapidly (chapters 1 and 2). What is clear is that, even if with small steps, the library community needs to grasp firmly the varied and myriad opportunities and developments that are currently on offer, some of which have been described above (chapters 5 and 6). There is a good case for adopting Web 2.0 technologies both to train ourselves (Chapter 4) and to facilitate learning in others (Chapter 3). The alternative is potential extinction or the appropriation of information skills by other professional areas. In such a context, trying small incremental implementations, which improve on existing services in new and more proactive ways, is a potential way forward. As Brindley said: ‘Act smart and just do it.’

References