Web 2.0, The Machine Is Us/ing Us

Blog Post #3

In watching an informative you tube video named “The Machine is Us/ing Us”, I think I understand the reason Professor Wesch named it so.  Courtney, in her book Library 2.0 and Beyond…(2007). explains that Web 2.0, whether a real concept or just a buzz word and piggyback term off of an earlier concept of Web 1.0 created with the World Wide Web, is changing and affecting us as a society.  Web 2.0 helps us better understand these changes in the web and our communication “evolution”.  I think this video eludes to the question “Is all this web content necessary and/or even useable?”  There used to be an issue with web content format but this is no longer.  We are uploading and posting information, photos, maps, thoughts, opinions, and so on and so on in unbelievable quantities.  Because we can all add this information to the web whenever and almost however we want, we have created a massive cesspool of information, useful or not.  Millions of blogs are posted everyday.  With this massive uploading of information comes the burden of organization.  How do we do it?  Who does it?  We all do.  We tag our information and photos and thus teach the web.  Who knows what all it does with this information about us.  But we are providing the information.  We are the driving the machine and yet we are the machine at the same time.  The web is one big database, so we are, too.  We even have it automatically exchanging data while we sleep and while we’re awake.  Are we going about this all wrong?  Are we going overboard in the use of the web?  We as a society are continually evolving towards becoming web driven beings.   I am not so sure we will recognize older forms of communication and information deriving ways in the near future.  Whether we are using the machine or we are the machine, Web 2.0 is linking information & people.  Web 2.0 is all about collaboration and sharing.  With these changes in communication and information publishing, we have to consider the changes in the information’s credibility.  As the video asks, how does this idea affect copyright, anonymity & privacy, control, commerce, and ourselves?  We must continually answer that question and try to make this machine work for the better good of us all.