Web 2.0 and Loyal Sedition

And so, with no small amount of reluctance, I have finally launched a web log (or “blog” in today’s vernacular). This is mostly in response to a Web 2.0 initiative by my employer. To be fair, though, my former Commentary section at the Dancing Giant Inn served a similar purpose and now provides a ready-made archive for this space. What’s next? A MySpace page or my own World of Warcraft account?

Web 2.0 is more than another empty bit of marketing, though the term has certainly been used in this manner. In a nutshell, the Web 2.0 concept represents the combination of web-based software and user-generated content. This contrasts with the traditional model of controlled content authoring and desktop software distribution.

I foresaw this trend at least a decade ago, when I created my first website. Back then, I described a time when software developers would simply provide the tools that would allow non-programmers to create useful electronic content. I saw programs like Netscape Composer and Microsoft FrontPage as early examples of this technology, but a web-based distribution model seemed more like science fiction at the time.

While I was clicking away at HTML on my dial-up connection, the Internet was quickly blooming with user-created content. What I was trying to accomplish with my monolithic website was being accomplished much more easily on web logs, photo-sharing sites, on-line auctions, discussion forums, and social-networking sites. To some extent, I was ignoring the very technology I had predicted and desired.

My late arrival to high-speed connectivity explains some of my reluctance to embrace these trends, but there is more to it than that. I wanted total control over the architecture of my content—or at least as much control as I could get. In pursuit of this goal, I built my own websites from the ground up, teaching myself HTML as I moved slowly forward. I’m sure that I even sneered at all those Internet plebeians who were quickly popping out so many MySpace pages.

I will have to let go of some more of my stubbornness in this respect. It won’t be easy, but I’ve been making progress. There is a wild and wonderful world out there on the Internet. It’s time for me to embrace all of it … maybe.

I will talk about Loyal Sedition and what that’s all about in a later post.