You are viewing the category: Internet
Leading by Example... But What is the Example Again?
In my typical ‘blocking‘ style, I have been going through a few of the 21st Century Learning podcasts, and was I should comment again – this time on Episode 10: SLA, Education Bridges, Info Literacy. I thought it was interesting that almost three times in this episode, the guys mentioned doing things that they had […]
Great Tips on Getting Organised
I suspect episode 8 of 21st Century Learning (“Getting Things Done“) would be a very valuable listen to what would seem to be a large, and growing segment of the population – people with too much to do and too little time. I won’t get into the details, but I thought that I would point […]
The Roles of the Author, Sub-author and Meta-author
The idea that a reader can come to a conclusion before the author has even thought of it really intrigued me…
So does the role of a central author become irrelevant?
EdTech Software Rises and Falls – Can it Rise Again?
At the end of this post are some quotes from a very interesting article by MATT RICHTEL called “Once a Booming Market, Educational Software for the PC Takes a Nose Dive”. It was published by the NYTimes on August 22, 2005 – the original is here. In summary, the article shows that the retail sales […]
Upgrading to the term Web 2.1
Unfortunately I tuned into this podcast a couple of weeks after the fact, but even so, I’d like to share an interesting perspective. It was one of many discussions that flared up around this blog post by Tom Raftery from IT@CORK (in Ireland) who received a cease and desist letter from the legal team of O’Reilly publishers. Apparently O’Reilly StyleMarked (similar to TradeMarked) the term “Web 2.0 Conference” and after many oppotunitites, took this opportunity to start enforcing it on a small 1/2 day conference on the other side of the world. Follow either of the above links for more info.
Firstly, I should mention that I am not against companies protecting their ideas and their names, but I think O’Reilly has stepped way out of line for many reasons. Firstly, having known about it for 9 months and waited till the last 2 weeks was just rude. Secondly, not bothering to have a polite discussion and jump straight into legal threats is not only very rude, but very inefficient (unless you like feeding legal piranhas). Thirdly, when I was taught about trademarks, I was told that you had to be careful, because if your trademark becomes a generic term, you loose control of it, so I think O’Reilly has lost their dubious control anyway.
It is almost an anti-climax that O’Reilly have no jurisdiction in Ireland to be trying to enforce anyway – while it is extremely shameful to O’Reilly, it kind of leaves the core issue unresolved. And as I learn from Lawrence Lessig, unresolved issues are a lawyer’s playground, and ‘chill’ the environment. In this case, people in America will still be scared of receiving a letter from O’Reilly, so many will confirm, whether they really need to or not.
So I propose an interesting solution to this issue. I think from now on, everyone should refuse to refer to the term “Web 2.0” and instead use the term “Web 2.1”. Not only does this give O’Reilly no leg to stand on, it also sends a clear message that the social web will not stand for corporate intimidation. So in this way, it is describing a new version of the web, which justifies an incremental version increase. And with an almost self prophetic irony, it is creating a new version of the web that the term itself ushers in. Web 2.0 has been around long enough for it to look significantly different now compared to when it first emerged, so I think it is high time to evolve to Web 2.1. Web 2.1 can also represent the related fights for Internet Neutrality (www.savetheinternet.com and www.itsournet.org) and Free Culture (www.lessig.org and www.eff.org).
To pre-empt any future issues, I’ll state that not only Web 2.1, but Web X.X can now be considered a generic term, so no one can own trademark control over it in the future.
Of course, the only way for the term Web 2.1 to become completely generic and for people to be free of unacceptable corporate restrictions and intimidation is for this idea to be spread and used. Ok, sure, it is a long shot, but if it was to happen, ideally, it should not be used blindly, but should be used with knowledge of what it represents and why it became necessary.
I’ve now dug a little deeper, and found that quite a few people have proposed that incrementing Web 2.0 is a good idea, which is great – it might just catch on yet. Liam Breck mentions that Web 2.5 is already coined for “the fusion of web 2.0 tools with mobile tech” so its probably a good thing we steered clear of that. However, none of the posts that I read went into the same detail I’ve covered above:
