Web 2.0 makes all the world a stage

Blogging began in the early 1990’s with a small group of online diarists exploring the Internet as a new medium for self-publishing and a source of physically remote, but electronically connected readership; Claudio Pinhanez’s MIT published “Open Diary” and Justin Hall’s online journal are two examples of early blogs.

Restricted by its technological infancy, the early weblog was more a literal transposition of the handwritten diary in electronic form, than the platform for self-promotion, marketing and trend-spotting that many of today’s blogs have become. Whereas keeping a written diary is usually seen as a solitary and sometimes secretive practice, today’s online diaries or ‘weblogs’ have veered away from privacy in pursuit of maximum exposure – this is what I’ve come to think of as the pursuit of a ‘ubiquitous voice’.

The relevance of self-ascendancy and the Internet with regard to the ‘general user’ has increased in the past five years with the advent of so-called ‘Web 2.0‘ technology and it’s array of user-oriented applications. The combination of intuitive GUI’s and a strong emphasis on building interactive social networks, backed up by broadband Internet technology (including ‘Wifi’ connectivity in public spaces) has facilitated the mass dissemination of information in real time.

One of the consequences of this online user boom has been in repositioning the individual as ‘informer’ from the periphery to the centre of popular culture. It is the possibility of reaching an audience of thousands at the click of a button coupled with our ability to process and consume information with greater expedience, autonomy and mobility (RSS feeds, ipods, laptops, Blackberry, mobile phones etc) that has attracted users to sites such as Wordpress for blogging, YouTube for video blogging, Myspace for social networking and more recently Twitter for ‘microblogging’.

Each social network serves as a ’stage’ on which users are offered the chance to speak out to a potential audience of millions (though in reality the average user is lucky if he/she reaches a hundred people). The messages are diverse but the aims are quite similar: to influence the online community and to convert an impromptu audience into loyal returning visitors (not unlike Fringe theatre). The more people hear my voice, the more my voice becomes important regardless of what I have to say, and in turn the material remains of my voice (text, audio, video, photos etc) become a source of online currency – both literal and symbolic. Literal in the sense that popularity on the Internet means large amounts of web traffic which can be channeled to reap financial gain through advertising and symbolic in the sense that I gain respect for having achieved notoriety and this can become a window of opportunity in the ‘real’ world.

To dismiss this trend as the desire for fleeting celebrity as per Andy Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” would be to neglect the plurality of motivations that underpin the blogging user base. A great deal of blogging, be it in written, audio or video form is primarily concerned with communication and interaction: Communication with people from around the world that would otherwise not have been possible in the pre-Internet era. Communication and to some extent validation of one’s ideas by promoting reader interaction through comments and feedback. Validation of one’s personal culture in that blogging enables people to compare and contrast but also to share in specific cultural pursuits. Finally, and perhaps most important of all is the ‘free’ dissemination of information and the tacit/informal learning involved in publishing, reading and viewing the work of others.