Web 2.0 Raises Questions

Who will answer them? In short. You will. We will. I remember people saying, “I don’t like the internet, it’s too impersonal.” I remember people telling me “your generation doesn’t embrace human interaction.” But what’s happening on the web these days flies in the face of that description. The web is creating interactions at a hyperactive pace.

Here I am, sitting in my office typing what I think and in a few minutes thousands of people will have immediate access to those thoughts. In a day or so, when Google has indexed this site, billions of people will have access to those thoughts. You and they will have access to comment on those thoughts. Agree with them, disagree with them, forward them to someone else. Maybe you won’t agree with my thoughts, or these thoughts, but there are a million blogs out there now. Blogs and wikis break down the barrier to getting ideas out to the world, into the community. They make it easy for you to get your ideas out and into the community.

But with this, come questions. More ideas mean more good ideas as well as more bad ideas. Maybe more bad ideas than good ones. Who has the good ideas and how do you distinguish the good idea people from the bad idea people? Those are good questions. Questions that we don’t necessarily have the answers to. Schools are banning wikipedia because it’s not a credible source. Who’s to say that the community isn’t a better source than one expert. Don’t experts have opinions that are inevitably expressed in their writing, no matter how technical? Does authorship by “the community” help balance these questions out? I don’t know, but they’re good questions.

You’re a part of this brave new community, on in which a child in Africa can go to MIT easier than those that are going to MIT. Michael Wesch, Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State has a great, four and a half minute video entitled The Machine is Us/ing Us that not only helps us think about these things. His video is also thought provoking in how we present information. Take a look and when you do, take note, we’re talking about something important here, and we’re using YouTube to do it. It’s like Trix, it’s not just for kids. Via Lawrence Lessig, via Boing Boing.

This Bullhorn Blog post was written by Dan Donathan, Chief Information Officer at PrideStaff, a national staffing organization delivering innovative solutions to the challenges employers face every day. Through a combination of strong leadership at the national and local level, PrideStaff has consistently delivered exceptional service to our clients and field associates. You can contact Dan at ddonathan@pridestaff.com.