Fad of the day: defining Web 2.0
The past two weeks I've read a flurry of blog posts engaging in debate on the best definition of today's favorite buzz phrase: Web 2.0. A lot of people are now linking to Joel Spolsky's contrarian viewpoint, which seems to have put a nice capstone on the conversation. At the risk of sounding as if I'm simply echoing his mixture of bafflement and contempt, I, too, have been confused by the mixture of conversations on pure technologies, applications of technology, and human behavior/social ill solutions I've come across with the phrase "Web 2.0" in their context.
Nicholas Carr, most reknowned for his collection of essays titled "Does IT Matter?," had one of the more intellectual contributions here: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/the_amorality_o.php.