Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Text is linear Text is unilinear Text is often said to be unilinear Text is unilinear when written on paper. Digital text is different. Digital text is more flexible. Digital text is moveable. Digital text is above all ... hyper. Digital hypertext is above all ... hypertext is above all ... hypertext can link here or here virtually anywhere anywhere virtually anywhere virtual Wayback Machine: Take Me Back Most early websites were written in HTML HTML was designed to define the structure of a web document. <p> is a structural element referring to "paragraph" <LI> is also a structural element referring to "list Item" As HTML expanded, more elements were added. Including stylistic elements like <b> for bold and <i> for italics Such elements defined how content would be formatted. In other words, form and content became inseperable in HTML Digital Text can do better. Form and content can be separated. XML was designed to do just that. <title> does not define the form. It defines the content. Same with <link> and <description> and virtually all other elements in this document. They describe the content, not the form. So the data can be exported, free of formatting constraints. Anthro Blogs Anthro Journals With form separated from content, users did not need to know complicated code to upload content to the web Beyond Etext Your blog has been created! Hello World! There's a blog born every half second and it's not just text ... YouTube flickr: Upload Photos XML facilitates automated data exchange two site can "mash" data together flickr maps Who will organize all of this data? digital ethnography hypermedia anthropology We will. You will. XML + U & ME create a database-backed web a database-backed web is different the web is different we are the web We Are the Web When we post and then tag pictures we are teaching the Machine Each time we forge a link we teach it an idea Think of the 100 billion times per day humans click on a Web page teaching the Machine the machine is us Digital text is no longer just linking information ... Hypertext is no longer just linking information ... The Web is no longer just linking information ... The Web is linking information ... The Web is linking people ... Web 2.0 is linking people ... ... people sharing, trading, and collaborating ... edit this page We'll need to rethink a few things ... rethink copyright rethink authorship rethink identity rethink ethics rethink aesthetics rethink rhetorics rethink governance rethink privacy rethink commerce rethink love rethink family rethink ourselves. by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthroplogy, Kansas State University Digital ethnography @ Kansas State University music by DEUS, There's Nothing impossible cc, some rights reserved