Web 2.0!

"It's so easy, my dad can use it!!"

Interesting. I hadn't ever heard of this 'resurgance' or 'redevelopment' of the web. I suppose it's true though, but it's something that never really hit me. Seems a lot of websites before the ''big dot com crash'' were turning stupid things into something you could pay for online. Like paying somebody to walk your dog, or order groceries online or some other rediculous thing.

The new web certainly is different in a sense, a little more level headed, and a lot more useful. At least in terms of hobbies of mine, it's pretty easy to find a wealth of information online. Who would think you could find schematics or an operator's manual for a 25 year old arcade game scanned and cleaned up into PDF format? I needed a gun for an Operation Wolf arcade game and had it in my hands in probably less than a week.

It seems this new net is more about preservation (at least in my OWN experiences), and providing useful information around the web. It seems as though you can find pretty much anything about anything, which is nice opposed to the porn (still rampant I guess) and "a shrine to my puppy" (still rampant I guess) pages that flooded the net of yesteryear.

Communities definitely are a major part of this "new" 2.0. Like in these articles we read, so many people take part in forums, newsgroups (kinda getting outdated it seems), and various other "communities." It's interesting to see how people act in there- I'd often like to see how these people actually act in real life without having a computer to hide behind. I see some pissing matches online that are hilarious. There's one going on now on a Pinball newsgroup; people tearing each other apart over a debate about lacquer dimples. Can you believe that? And these people are much older than I.

I'm interested to see Ben's project's outcome, because I know it deals with online communities, groups, clans, etc. Had I known how fascinating it is, I wouldn't mind doing a project on it myself :-)

Are any of you part of online communities (other than say, MySpace, Friendster), clans, etc? Have you seen any evidence of how people act online vs. online?