The machine, the computer, is us. We are the computer because we place our creations, our thoughts, our images on the Web, in a very interactive way. We now use this medium to collaborate in real time, across vast distances. We meet on line to read, watch, hear, discuss, learn, inform, even debate with friends, colleagues, possibly even strangers. Our lives are cataloged on websites that sort and arrange our financial data, educational data, favorite photographs, even our memories written in blogs and tweets.
The machine, again the computer, is using us. The World Wide Web uses people every day to add to its vast store of information, trivia, music, and videos. When we store “our” thoughts, feelings, knowledge, lives on the Internet there is program code there as well, code that was designed to learn from every bit of input. We sort our lives using folders, brackets, and software applications; all the while the programming of these applications is also sorting our information following guidelines written by programmers unknown to us. The machine can then begin using these bits of input information and digital media to expand the knowledge the web contains, thus making it even more useful to us, and thus, making us useful to the machine to help it grow its knowledge base.
I believe Professor Wesch gave his video this title because the Web 2.0 is interactive; it grows and expands daily as we spend more and more time inputting the information of all aspects of our lives into the computer, onto Web 2.0.
No comments:
Post a Comment