An Attempt at Summation

So, at some point last week I reached the end of "Here Come's Everybody" and I am just now getting to the final blog entry (for the book reading).

It seems as though it should be collective in nature, a declaration of my overall learning experience. So, I will try to make it so. I'll try to make it somewhat brief as well, because I don't think what Mr. Shirky was trying to say required 300 pages.

The web has not always been around. In fact, it has been around for a very short period of time (relatively). While it has been around, it has certainly been revolutionary. Many of our daily activities and leisure activities have changed as a result. Shopping, travel planning, networking, communicating, information gathering, wasting time...many, many things have changed. Web 2.0 makes us all creators, consumers, editors, critics, and researchers. We float between the different roles effortlessly and instantaneously, many times wearing several different hats at a time. An incredible amount of responsibility has been placed upon us all since we have the ability to change what someone perceived to be true about something (through a Wikipedia article), whether someone makes a purchase or not (through Amazon reviews), or who someone votes for in the upcoming election (through political blogs and article posts). Amazingly we have all entrusted each other with these abilities. This may mostly be due to the fact that we hardly have another option, but also because we are incredibly eager and ecstatic to discover what we can all do when we allow each other to redefine our roles on the web beyond mere users.

I think Mr. Shirky should have spoken more extensively about how this revolution fits into many other revolutions that have taken place.

The American Revolution set the world up for an end to imperialism, the internal combustion engine changed travel forever, as did the invention of flight, the phone revolutionized communications (as the internet later would), and many other inventions and happenings changed the way things are perceived and accomplished forever. So, while I believe the internet (specifically web 2.0) has made incredible changed to our society that are at once fascinating and somewhat frightening, I believe that many more wonderful and mind-blowing inventions are to come in the near future. Maybe somewhere along the way someone will really figure out economics as well, but probably not.