The telegraph, the telephone, the radio, the television, they are all forms of communication. What are very interesting are the myths that surround these mediums. After reading through both, Digital sublime: myth, power and cyberspace-When old myths were new by Mosco, V. and the conclusion to Personal Connection in the Digital Age by Nancy Baym, I have come to better understand what Web 2.0 is and how it works.
There were a few things that I found interesting in these articles. First off in the Digital sublime article, it talks about how all these previous technologies have had the myths about how they will "end all". After reading this, a question arose in my head. When we look at Web 2.0, it encompasses all of the former mediums listed above. You can achieve telephone communications, radio, and television all on this one medium. Does that mean that all these former myths that were attached to these technologies arise again? So could Web 2.0 really end it all? I stumbled upon a quote in the Mosco V. article that is interesting, "Put simply, we want to believe that our era is unique in transforming the world, as we have known it." (Mosco V.) I think Web 2.0 truly has transformed our world. I believe this mainly because no other medium has encompassed all the other mediums that have come before it. Web 2.0 has accomplished this. It changes everything. It's all right there in one form, access to all sorts of communication technologies.
I found something very interesting in the Nancy Baym reading. "By being conscientious and aware of what media offer, what choices we make with them, and what consequences those choices have for us, we can intervene in and influence the process of norm development in our own relationships, our peer and familial groups, and our cultures"(Nancy Baym, Pg. 155). What I get from this quote is that even though Web 2.0 is sometimes looked upon as an evil creature or a machine, it has its positive points. It is said that Web 2.0 is the machine, and Web 2.0 is us, so we are the machine. This is interesting because after reading this quote and if you accept that we are the machine, it would seem to me that Web 2.0 is only a learning tool. Something we can use to help learn about ourselves. Through using the web we learn about how we can make our culture, families, our own relationships, better than they were before.
