Web 2.0 is defined as
a tool of networking and communication.
It gives us the ability to interact, debate and share ideas with people
globally, and blurs the line between the creator and the reader. It encourages and enables participation and
reduces barriers such as money and time, allowing more people to get involved in the process of
collaboration, sharing and interaction.
As a young adult
living in 2013, it is now the norm that I am exposed and participating daily
with Web 2.0. I use Facebook and Twitter for my own personal enjoyment, and am
now a keen blogger, posting my own opinions as well as reading, commenting and
debating with others! Not only this, but when thinking strictly about myself as
a lover of Musical Theatre, as well as an aspiring choreographer and teacher, Web
2.0 opens up to me a level of communication and interaction that can further my
career in a way that would not have been possible before.
The reader talks about active
and passive participation, in other words taking part in something as well as creating it. The modern idea of
#hash-tagging is a perfect example of this. Anyone these days can create a
#hash-tag, but depending on current affairs that week #hash-tags can trend,
meaning they are used by thousands of people across the world. The creator of
the ‘trend’ could be anyone, instantly uniting celebrities with us every day
folk. Re-tweeting elaborates this further. I will always remember my friend’s
excitement when she was re-tweeted by Lord Alan Sugar! In her everyday life her
opinion would not matter to Lord Sugar, as they have no personal contact what
so ever. However in a world where Web 2.0 is so important, Lord Sugar found her
opinion important enough to re-tweet, therefore uniting these two people.
When reading through the reader I was very interested to
find the following statistic; the average
user (of Facebook) has 130 friends. This
instantly got me thinking about the amount of friends I have on Facebook (over
900!), and how many of them I would call my actual friends, that I spend time
with face to face. I reckon a little over a hundred of these people I see
fairly regularly through work and socialising and about 30 of them I would
consider my really close friends. So
what about the other 800 that I am exposing my day to day events too? In some
ways this all can be seen as a positive. Facebook is allowing me to interact
with friends that I don’t get to see often, as well as allowing us both to see
what the other has been up to. But when thinking about it another way, Facebook
is exposing my whole life to people that I might have been friends with once,
but now have no contact with.
Looking at this idea in terms of my career, I am now hugely
aware of my web ‘profile’ and how people in the Musical Theatre industry may
view me. In the reader Gruber talks
about Web 2.0 being a place where your
data can be searched, indexed and positioned to allow you to connect with other
people. This means that someone interviewing me for a job can probably find
out a lot more about me by simply typing my name into Google, than by meeting
me for 10 minutes for an interview. A scary, yet very real thought...
Gruber also talks about the benefits of Google as it is very
good at finding a message in a public
forum in which someone has asked a question similar to ones query. I am
guilty of using Google for this exact reason. The other day I needed a piece of
instrumental music for contemporary dance I was creating. I simply opened up
Google and typed ‘good instrumental contemporary dance music’ and was instantly
faced with links to forums where people had asked a question similar to mine.
Although this initially looked helpful, my search wasn’t specific enough and I
ended up finding it a lot easier to simply browse on i-tunes. This opens up the
debate about Web 2.0 against non web- based research such as newspapers and
books. The obvious positives about Web 2.0, as well as Web 1.0 are that a lot
of information is available to you very quickly. However, is this information
always relevant? And it is healthy for today’s society to be constantly sitting
in front of a computer rather than going out and seeking the information for themselves?
Has that thirst for knowledge gone, or has that phase simply taken a different
path?
Iona I really like how you have tackled this blog - looking at your Web 2.0 practice using the theories - e.g. Gruber - and actually connecting up the ideas of how you are using your social media presence on the web. 900 is a lot - but how are they used?
ReplyDeleteThank you Paula. An interesting question you raised.. some of them are used just as an extension to our friendship/ relationship. For example I have my sister and brothers on facebook. Some are relatives that live in different countries and so facebook is a great way to keep in contact. Some are people relevant to my career or a general work related people. Some are literally used as a way for me to know whats going on in people's lives that I don't see/ haven't seen in a very long time! Very strange when you write it down, but I think a lot of people actually do the same!
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