Web 2.0's Elusive Definition

Definition of Web 2.0
Web 1.0 = "Presentation Exchange"
Web 2.0 = "Information Interchange"

The evolution of "Presentation Exchange" to "Information Interchange" does not happen all at once as the "two-point-oh" would suggest, rather it happens as the critical mass of both the capabilities and the intent of the Web evolve.

Maybe thinking of Web 2.0 as the "Second Generation Web"would suit some better (notice I didn’t say "Internet" that's on somewhere between its fifth and sixth generation (maybe more, maybe less?) whereas the World Wide Web is surely just leaving its first generation and heading toward its second) , I like Web 2.0 - it's more succinct and techie, I can read between the digits, that's the point, isn't it?

Here's to my real point...

There are many (naysayer’s) out there today worrying about whether or not we should be calling is "Web 2.0" or not... idiosyncratically arguing whether the current round of web technology innovations are truly different or not. It's really above all that. When you look at the "coiner's" (let's get real, it's Tim O'Reilly) intent and his own definition I believe we can sum it up pretty clearly.

If the media types are looking for a snazzy new way to 'define' what we mean out here in the web-o-sphere then please feel free to use mine, or better yet leave it open to each individual's interpretation... what really matters is that collectively we are ready to do more with the Web. It has earned its permanent place in our lives and as it evolves, from time to time we will want to make demarcations on where one phase or generation starts and where one ends. I believe that this is such a time. the technology is starting to catch up with the vision.

O’Reilly may have been the first to coin the evolution in such a way that it is beginning to stick, yet I am sure even he will agree that the underpinnings of this change have been afoot for some time now. It’s the reason that even Microsoft made big bets back before mid-2000 on co-creating new standards and got behind XML, the idea of Web Services and the Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS) concept, now more commonly known by its trade name: .NET

Clearly in the last three plus years we developers and business people alike have been morphing use of the Web from a place where static data (even 'changing static' data like a stock ticker is static, one can only receive temporal updates rather than interact with it) is presented to a viewer (people) (browsing is intrinsically 'viewing') to a web where dynamic information is managed, manipulated, viewed, expanded and exchanged between people and systems so that the web can carry intelligence and not just data (turning data into information that is meaningful to the recipient and the fact that it is received is meaningful to its originator and the fact that each can be directly or indirectly aware of each others action on the data is evidence of an evolution to a next generation)