Antonio Cambra (tonicambra@gmail.com)
Secondary School IT Teacher, Font de Sant Lluis Secondary School, Valencia

Abstract

The term Web 2.0 has recently come to form part of the vocabulary associated with the internet. Semantically imprecise, it looks to capture a moment in the development of the internet where the user becomes the central catalyst with a greater capacity for expression, interaction and participation provided by certain recently developed technologies. Despite this, certain figures and experts are critical of the current course, which they accuse of leading to a whole series of effects that, far from being desirable, bring into question the ideal nature of the evolution of the internet. Expressions such as cultural levelling, cult of the amateur or collective intelligence (used pejoratively) have formed around the term Web 2.0 producing an aureole of dystopic resonance.

This article looks to relativise some of the arguments that form part of the dystopic view of the Web 2.0, reflecting on the internet from an alternative perspective that helps understand the phenomenon without being overcome by the pessimism that it seems to be subject to in terms of the views of certain experts. Far from presupposing a telos dictating its evolution, the article defends an idea of the internet as a pragmatic field for experimentation that is legitimate as a "path" rather than a "destination" in terms of an implicit or expected development.

Keywords

Submission date: November 2007
Accepted in: December 2007
Published in: May 2008