Feature
By Kit brown
- Tim O'Reilly: "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform." (http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/web_20_compact.html)
- Dario de Judicibus: "Web 2.0 is a knowledge-oriented environment where human interactions generate content that is published, managed and used through network applications in a service-oriented architecture." (http://lindipendente.splinder.com/post/15354690/World+2.0)
- Stephen Fry: "...an idea in people's heads rather than a reality. It's actually an idea that the reciprocity between the user and the provider is what's emphasised. In other words, genuine interactivity, if you like, simply because people can upload as well as download". (http://www.videojug.com/interview/stephen-fry-web-20)
One of the great advantages of Web 2.0 is the passion and participation of the users. By building community around an idea, product, or service, the consumers/users become active participants in its success or failure. That vested interest can lead to more information sharing, networking, and community building.
Challenges to Web 2.0
User-generated content is a key component of Web 2.0. This naturally has significant implications for technical communicators and translators, among others. If users are generating the content, what purpose do technical communicators and translators serve?
And, if everyone is generating content about pet topics, who is separating the gold from the slag? Ze Frank, closing speaker at the 2007 STC conference, talked about this difficulty, calling much of the user-generated content "crap-o-copia".
Wikipedia is a perfect example of the difficulty in establishing trust for the content's provenance and veracity when "anyone" can contribute to the mix. While many of the articles available are well-researched, interesting, and well-written (and some would argue that all history is a matter of opinon/perspective anyway), few people trust the accuracy of what they read on Wikipedia without verifying the content's veracity with other, more trusted sources. This is because pranksters, gossip mongers, and people with a vested interest in a certain spin to the story can post to Wikipedia and change the information to suit their personal agendas. The trust isn't there because the controls for preventing bad information from being published haven't been developed enough.
Then, of course, there is always the issue of organizing the content, after sorting the good from the bad/inaccurate/naughty/irrelevant. RSS feeds, aggregator sites like AllTop, search engines like Google all attempt to filter content for the user according to requested criteria, with varying degrees of success.
Skills
Technical communicators are experts at sifting content and organizing it in a way that people can make use of it. These are the skills that need to be honed to remain relevant as the communication professions is redefined. While companies will employ professional communicators for the forseeable future (if only to attempt to control the messages disseminated), writing, editing, graphic design, and language skills are no longer enough. Skills in the following areas are also needed:
- strategic thinking
- metadata development
- data wrangling
- information architecture
- user-centered design
- agile development
- psychology of groups
- information/content management
- analysis and critical thinking
We are already seeing the shift in our jobs from content creation toward developing the framework to support content creation, as structured content and content management systems become more mature and more common.
The Future
It's always risky to predict the future, but these skills will continue to be necessary as technical communicators and other language professionals get pulled into developing the frameworks to support Web 2.0, such as Second Life, virtual reality labs, social networking sites, wikis, and so on.
And, it's not just the communication professions that are affected. Web 2.0 has the potential to completely redefine our social structure and our economy. Anyone with access to the Internet can participate, and offline social status doesn't matter as much as contribution to global knowledge.
With open source, the egalitarian nature of the Internet, and the social tendencies of humans, a new bartering system is developing. Instead of the goods and services bartered in the ancient days, we are bartering information and ideas. It remains to be seen how well information will parlay into real goods and services, but the Red Paper Clip experiment shows the power of bartering using the web. Freecycle also demonstrates this phenomenon.
Conclusion
The Star Trek vision of the future includes a society where money doesn't exist, people get their basic needs met (food, shelter, clean water), and are free to choose their own path. We are a long way from that scenario, but Web 2.0 is a step toward it.
To be successful in using it, however, we must figure out ways to provide effective provenance for the content generated, while harnessing the passion and participation of the users who have a vested interest in its success.
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In addition to editing this newsletter, Kit Brown coauthored with Brenda Huettner and Char James-Tanny the book, Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools, available from Wordware Publishing, Inc. (http://www.wordware.com/wiki/).