International Law

Social networking through the ages

The brilliant Stephen Fry takes a walk through the history of social networking, including a note about the correct pronounciation of Web 2.0:

Much ink, electronic and atomic, has been expended on the subject of social networking and web 2.0. First, let?s decide on how this last is pronounced. ?Web two? won?t do. ?Web two point oh? is common, but I heard it as ?web two dot oh? from the lips of Sir Tim Berners-Lee OM himself and since he is the only begetter of the web, I shall take my lead from him, the most influential Briton since? well, he has no rivals. Brian Blessed, perhaps.

Web 2.0 was christened, so far as I am aware, by Tim O?Reilly. Oh really? No, sir, O?Reilly. He was one of the early advocates of open source programming, and greatly championed Perl, the language my father speaks fluently but which involves too much brain power and concentration for the likes of me.

These days web 2.0 refers both to user-generated content and to social networking sites. Rather than passively searching, browsing and eyeballing the billions of pages of the web, millions now contribute their videos, their journals, their music, their photos, their lives.

Read the rest here.

(Hat tip via Twitter @mrees.)

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on January 12, 2008 (boomark / email).