O’Reilly’s article was interesting to me for several reasons. First, it brought me back to the short-lived days of Napster, and how life changing that was for me as a kid. While downloading music, movies etc. for free to me now is something I take for granted, ten years ago that concept was literally the craziest thing that I had ever experienced. Practically any song I could want to listen to was immediately available to me. Before Napster, if I wanted to hear a song I had to either wait for my parents to drive me to the mall so I could buy it on CD, or wait by the radio, cassette tape in hand, hoping that the song I wanted would get played and I could record it. The ease of access was something I never could have imagined. These days I get angry when I can’t find something I want available on a site like Piratebay. It’s bizarre to think that ten years ago I wouldn’t have had that capability. An interesting trip down internet memory lane.
The second thing I liked about this article, is not that it explained something I didn’t know, but it documented and legitimized something I already knew, I’d just never discussed it in those terms. The article gave me a title, Web 2.0, for something I simply didn’t know needed a title. While I remember a time before Wikipedia, I remember it only vaguely, simply because I wasn’t using the internet much until about 10 or 11, right about when Web 2.0 was coming to the forefront. That doesn’t mean however that a site like Youtube didn’t seem exciting and fresh to me. I just never really considered that there was ever a division of the web being user driven versus not user driven.
This article did make me stop and appreciate all these great sites and tools that have been created and expanded during the last decade. Just like Napster, I have taken for granted how truly awesome it is to have sites like eBay, Flickr, even the now defunct Geocities, that let you use their site for free for your own purposes.
I also like this article because it supports my belief that if the world were to experience a 1984 like take-over, we might be okay if Google is behind it all. Not that I actually want that to happen, I’m just saying that Google is pretty awesome. They let me look at my house from a satellite (for free), I can create documents and presentations on Google Docs (for free), I can talk to people on Gchat (for free), have an email account, have all my blog feeds in one place, surf the internet on Google Chrome, get directions, watch videos, pretty much do whatever I want, FOR FREE. Google is awesome. I watched a TV show where they went in the Google offices and they had a video game room for their employees. This is how the world should be run.
P.S. Google do not take this as a sign that you should actually go ahead with your world takeover plan.
