The entity that we know today as the internet was born out af a desire to connect people together via their computers. Initially almost everything that was completed was text based and users needed to know a lot of commands and the order to type in these commands. As time moved on, graphical browsers were developed and the systems evolved so that getting online didn’t involve crazy things called trumpets, winsocks or gophers.

In the early days of the internet Usenet was developed to allow people to communicate and even to share files. Usenet resembled a lot of the bulletin boards that its users moved from and it quickly grew into a huge communication network with a hierachical structure. It was amazing. Ifyour method of getting onto the internet (ISP) had a newsgroup server you could get a newsgroup reader and get involved. If your ISP didn’t have an nntp server then you could login to a free or paid one.

Usenet newsgroups were cool. In the old days I used to dial up, fire up Forte Free Agent (my reader of choice) and I would download hundreds of message headers. I’d skim through and mark anything that interested me for download later. Posts were sorted into threads and if I was interested in something I could subscribe to a thread and even join in the conversation – all from my ancient computer in the middle of the North Island of New Zealand. It was very cool. (Sidenote: Usenet was a crazy mix of democracy and anarchy. Anyone could join in and for the most parts newsgroups were unmoderated and uncensored. There was a way to do things though and newbies were given a hard time for not adhering to the correct netiquette. Bloggers Code of Conduct? People really need to take a look backwards in order to go forwards – but that’s another post)

Usenet posts were archived in dejanews and you could search them. There was an ocean of information out there in the ether and you could choose to get it if you wanted it. In 2001 Google bought out Deja (which is what dejanews had become) and Usenet morphed into what we know today as Google Groups.

Enough of the history lesson.

O’Reilly Media coined the term Web2.0 to describe a new phase in the evolution of the internet. In a piece from 2005, (entitled What is Web2.0 – Design Patterns and Business Models For the Next Generation of Software) Time O’Reilly writes,

The concept of “Web 2.0″ began with a conference brainstorming session between O’Reilly and MediaLive International. Dale Dougherty, web pioneer and O’Reilly VP, noted that far from having “crashed”, the web was more important than ever, with exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity. What’s more, the companies that had survived the collapse seemed to have some things in common. Could it be that the dot-com collapse marked some kind of turning point for the web, such that a call to action such as “Web 2.0″ might make sense? We agreed that it did, and so the Web 2.0 Conference was born.

If you do a cruise around the internet there is a common theme to material about Web2.0. The Wikipedia amalgamates a lot of those popular ideas when it says,

Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004,^[1] refers to a perceived second-generation of Web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. O’Reilly Media used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences, and it has since become widely adopted.

Though the term suggests a new version of the Web, it does not refer to an update to Internet or World Wide Web technical standards, but to changes in the ways those standards are used. According to Tim O’Reilly, “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”^[2].

I don’t argue that Web2.0 exists and that many amazing, clever and wonderful applications have come from it. Many of the new tools out there make it increasingly easy to connect, collaborate and create. And that’s what we want. However, by getting caught up in the whole Web2.0 terminology we’re being sidetracked by the hype. Which is what we are trying to teach our kids not to do.

If you randomly pick six educational websites or blogs, I would wager that at least four of them will be talking about a cool new web application or an advance on an old one. A new feature in Flickr, a new calendar application, ad free wikis for educators. Twitter anyone? Then we all dive in and get excited about what we can do. And then someone changes the rules.

And the reason why someone changes the rules? It’s because the people that are designing these new and improved amazing cool toys want (need) to make a dollar. Every month hundreds of new ideas are launched onto the internet in the hope that (a) people will get excited, (b) the big boys will sit up, take notice and offer them some money or a job (or both). And then they can be part of the big boys.

Remember Jotspot? That was a very cool wiki. It probably is still very cool but in October of last year it was sold to Google and it hasn’t been seen since. And Flickr, a major Web2.0 posterboy, is no longer the benign photosharing site that it used to be. That’s just a couple of examples.

I believe that as educators we need to jump off the Web2.0 merry-go-round and stand still for a minute. We need to take stock and look at the big picture. The internet has always been about communication. The new tools mean that it’s possible for anyone and everyone to be part of a (the?) conversation. Great. But the rules are continually changing. Those great little applications are going to disappear because something better will arrive on the scene or they are going to be bought out because they are that something that is better.

I think that it’s timely to go and have another look at EPIC. Either 2014 or 2015.