After
my phone-throwing incident earlier this week, I think I’ve calmed down enough
now to do the equivalent of going
on the Letterman show and saying sorry to anyone I offended. My friend Mike Arrington called
me a traitor and others baled me up about what I wrote. My position hasn’t
changed, but I think I can do a better job of explaining myself. So let me try and
clarify my position on Web 2.0.
1. I won’t be entering into any more debates about what is or isn’t Web
2.0. It’s a dead issue, as far as I’m concerned.
2. I will try my very best to refrain from using buzzwords, including the term ‘Web 2.0’
itself.
3. I won’t throw any more phones.
Here’s my main reason why:
The term has become too overblown and nebulous – and is holding us all back. We’re too focused on debating its meaning and fighting off the cynics, to make real progress with the actual technologies.
But to be clear, I will continue to write about the technologies and impact of this current era of the
Web. I am still a card-carrying member of the Web
2.0 Workgroup. I still run a ZDNet blog called Web
2.0 Explorer. I am still writing a book about designing networked
applications. The main change, which I referred to in my original
post, is
that my blog Read/WriteWeb will become more focused on media-related Web technologies.
Nothing else has changed, except I won’t be playing buzzword bingo anymore.
This isn’t a ‘You’re either for us or against us’ scenario, as Mike put it. Or me leaving the Irish Mafia for the Italians, as Ben
Barren put it. There are no black and white Bushisms in my world. This is a ‘What will
get me writing about the value of the Web again, rather than debating schmucks
and semantics?’ scenario. This is my declaration that the Web 2.0 debate is
dead and it’s time for us all to move on.
Capiche?
