is a source of fascination for me since I was finishing high-school. Besides the beauty of
, what grabbed me about complexity was the notion that something radically new can emerge from the normal, everyday interaction. I believe that the web is enabling human interaction in a way that patterning and emergence are becoming increasingly obvious.
One example:
, already mentioned in the previous post. It was created as a microblogging platform: one has 140 characters to answer the "what are you doing?" question. Pretty simple? Sure. But then one chooses who to follow (like subscribing to a RSS feed). Them people you follow may follow you, especially if they know you. You see who they reply to, so your community grows and a group emerges. Then
and politicians (
, for instance) started using it to keep a direct connection with their users or voters beyond traditional broadcast. Using Twitter's open API platform, software developers started making (and selling)
. Usage grows and
as new patterns keep on emerging, without a blueprint or a plan.
This is what the “web 2.0” really is about. After finishing reading
's latest book (
), I believe that something quite fundamental is happening: a new generation of people (the Net Geners, up to thirty-something) are using technology in different way because they're free from the hype: technology for them is like air, they don't pay too much attention to it, they just use it!
Update - After publishing this post, I came across some interesting opinions on
:
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