WRT: Writer Response Theory

Much has been made of the viral outbreak of Michael Wesch’s “Web 2.0…The Machine is Us/ing Us” (first noticed on Frank Gruber’s Somewhat Frank) Some of the reactions, including my initial one, have suggested that the piece is overly optimistic. However, we should not let the pulsing soundtrack, speed, and magically moving text and images distract us to miss his playfulness with these ideas, a montage of reactions to the notion of Web 2.0 more than a manifesto for it. Matt Kirschenbaum has commented on one of these moments, the use of the WayBack Machine. Below is a further analysis (or annotation) of the first 26 seconds or so of the film:

[This post offers context for a work-in-progress entitled “Marginalia in the Library of Babel.” alpha release.]

Let us write stories in the margins of the Web:

The web is becoming ours to write with. Whether supplying, ranking, or reviewing its contents or reordering the web with our folksonomic tagclouds, we are becoming the owners of more than just our Craig’s list and Ebay possessions. We are orchestrating this web and making of it what we will. Jeremy and Matt Kirschenbaum have reported on the moments when the tagclouds become art (see inset image made via TagCrowd.com). And now the web pages themselves have become our surfaces, our building blocks. Here’s