Web 2.0…We Respond To We/sch
Published by Mark Marino February 16th, 2007 in HCTI, Researchers, Features, News, Text Art, Criticism, MSA, Software, Social.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 (a song called “There’s Nothing Impossible”), 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:
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At that point the trade-off is clear, we give up the fluidity of the pencil on the surface of the blank page for the fluidity of moving via hyperlinks from the written page before us to another written page located anywhere, the sequence no longer bound by the spine of a book.