This week's lectures brought up a few things (out of the many) I didn't know about the Internet. I had never actually heard of Web 1.0 or 2.0 until the wednesday's class! What is of interest to me about the difference between these two are the ideas about there being a "dying distinction" between producers and consumers. For me, the fact that they are merging into one marks an advance in our society as we are able to have input, whether it be facts or opinions, as well as being able to take away knowledge. The only doubts I have about this integration is regarding question of reliability. I guess this is where I should bring Wikipedia up...
As much as I love trawling through Wikipedia as a form of procrastination, I have been told over and over and over again NEVER to reference it in any academic assignment. And I can understand why. Just the other day as an experiment I added myself to the list of Unicol's notable former residents, along with Marc Ellis and Anton Oliver. Needless to say it was changed after just 24 hours, the fact that it was that easy makes me question the reliability in a big way! The experiment in this week's reading was interesting though. The fact that it concluded that "experts rated the articles as more credible than the non-experts" was an interesting outcome. Although, as it said at the end (and because I'm really keen to use some of the knowledge I've been picking up in my stats paper), the sample size in the experiment was small, and this, among other reasons, would suggest that results could not be completely representative of the population of Wikipedia users...
"So what then is the use of an encyclopedia which might be unreliable? For some it is of no use, for others, it's a good starting point." <===== I AGREE!
As for Web 3.0, although I have no idea what the Internet will progress into, a video I found on youtube gives some ideas about where the Internet and technology is heading in the future(visit it here) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fUHtc37MC8&feature=related. Some of it makes alot of sense, like the combining of organisations like Google and Amazon to for "Googlezon" which leads to the personalizing of the Internet,(a sort of tailoring of information for each individual user). The video also talks about the combining of materials from users demographics, interests, previous purchases, essentially our "lives", to form news that is "more relevant than ever before". Although these progressions may not be happening this year as in the video, (which I emphasise, is fictitious!) I have a feeling they are not too far away at all!
See ya!
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