Digital Democracy and Web 2.0 ?

As expressed in earlier posts I am interested in how new "Social Networking" and "Web 2.0" concepts can be developed to encourage individual citizens to become more interactively involved in natural resource and ecosystems that affect them and the communities they are concerned about. Clearly we are now seeing the "tip of the iceberg" in how this interactivity might start to develop in the future. My view is that we, as individuals, will ultimately be the ones that produce the energy and involvement that will make this work. We have to learn how to use, and modify, the social networking tools that will be provided. In the article noted below Dan Fost makes a reference to a social networking Wiki project called "BarCamp" which encourages people to set up "un-conferences ... freewheeling roundtable discussions about how to use the latest technological innovations." This is a good example and a useful project to consider.

Yesterday, in the San Francisco Chronicle, Dan Fost wrote a very interesting overview noting critics an supporters of these concepts in an article titled, 'Digital Utopia - A new breed of technologists envisions a democratic world improved by the Internet.' "Behind the random silliness of YouTube videos and the juvenile frivolity of MySpace Web sites lies a powerful idea: Everyday people are using technology to gain control of the media and change the world.

At least that's what a new breed of Internet technologists and entrepreneurs want us to believe. The new Internet boom commonly referred to as Web 2.0 is really an exercise in digital democracy."

Interestingly, Fost concludes the article with what I feel is a pessimistic statement by Tim O'Reilly, organizer (and copyright, or service mark, name holder) of the popular Web 2.0 Conference, the third of which will begin this Tuesday in San Francisco. "Web 2.0, he says, is about business. He says many tech movements start out with similar idealism, only to give way to capitalism."

There are so many complexities related to the current use of the term "Capitalism" and how it is related to unexpected negative changes to natural ecosystems around the world, that if the term Web 2.0 is to be defined this way, I will probably prefer not to use it in the future. The more general term Social Networking is more acceptable and I hope a term will emerge that provides a positive movement toward sustainable ecosystems, if that is still possible.