Web 2.0 was marketed in revolutionary, democratizing rhetoric across media and academia

Evidence

In 2006, the cover of Time magazine’s annual “Person of the Year” issue depicted a computer with a shiny mirrored Mylar screen, intended to reflect the face of the viewer. The person of the year: You. The author of the piece, Lev Grossman, wrote: … It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes. The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web … not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it’s really a revolution. … This cover has become a cliché of technological utopianism, but Time’s breathless excitement over user-generated content was reflected in revolutionary rhetoric that appeared throughout the mainstream media as well as in hundreds of conferences and TED talks. To quote the Investor’s Business Daily, “User-contributed content will forever change online media—and the entire media business.” A writer for the Los Angeles Times claimed that Google’s acquisition of YouTube was about “the triumph of radical left-wing politics—which means it’s just as likely to subvert business as to support its reinvention.” And a commentator for Wired, reliably, wrote that “Web 2.0 … is about demo cratizing digital technology. There’s never been a better time to tap that technological ethic to redemocratize our democracy.” Utopian rhetoric also appeared in academia, where scholars investigated the new democratized web, discussed the participatory potential of crowdsourcing, and coined terms like “folksonomy,” “smart mobs,” and “free culture.” It seemed that the intellectual, media, and technological elite had converged on a single idea. The time was ripe for a revolution, and the mishmash of technologies collected under the umbrella “Web 2.0” was there to provide it. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 51

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the media-hype critique pattern in One Square Inch of Silence and general claims about manufactured cultural panics/promises; foundational context for understanding how self-branding rode utopian Web 2.0 discourse. — connects to: Web 2.0 is as much an ideology as a technology era — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 22; Web 2.0 was framed as a revolution distinct from the dotcom Web — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 50; Web 2.0 ideology framed information sharing as the bedrock of social and political revolution. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 52 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Web 2.0 was framed as a revolution distinct from the dotcom Web #expands (0.90) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 50
• Web 2.0 operates as an imagined community promising democratized creativity and wealth #expands (0.88) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 24
• Web 2.0 is as much an ideology as a technology era #corroborates (0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 22
• Web 2.0 ideology framed information sharing as the bedrock of social and political revolution. #expands (0.82) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 52
• Web 2.0 ideology fuses 1960s counterculture with pro-capitalist techno-determinism #expands (0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 41
• Web 2.0’s anti-establishment rhetoric coexisted with celebration of tech founders as celebrities #expands (0.78) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 53
• Web 2.0 culture promotes a neoliberal identity that is constructible and improvable. #expands (0.75) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 495
• Web 2.0’s defining shift was user-generated content on accessible platforms #qualifies (0.72) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 177