Sun 12 Nov 2006
Where the Web is going
Posted by bill under billstuff
The big hitters were in San Francisco for the latest Web 2.0 bash - though apparently we have to call it a ‘Summit’ these days - to what Nicholas Carr rather gloatingly describes as ‘tepid reviews‘.
Meanwhile I was at Bath University giving a well-received talk to the Computer Science Society, and having a far better time of it.
You can read the paper I prepared on my main talks page and I’ll put up the audio on the billcast later this week.
November 12th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
What, no rant about BUCS making you restart your machine?
November 12th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Hi Bill
I enjoyed your talk at Bath last week.
I agree with you that Web 2.0 is actually Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision of a read-write Web. However that vision is only being implemented over 10 years after the Web took off. So I think there is a need for a phrase to convey this change. The read-write Web could have been used - but, to be honest, the Web 2.0 term is now well-embedded (e.g. see last weekend’s Guardian magazine).
However the main disgreement I would have with your talk is that your are assuming that Web 2.0 just covers the user interface, and technologies such as AJAX. This isn’t true - Web Services (SOAP, etc.), RSS, clean URIs, etc. are a key part of Web 2.0 - and these aren’t user interface standards.
So yes we do want a more robust underlying architecture for the Web - but the users also want a richer user experience as well. And these aren’t incompatible.
Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus, UKOLN
PS Inadvertantly posted this comment under the wrong Blog article. Feel free to delete the other.