“Internet 2.0 is experienced in the first person”
Interview with JOAN MAYANS
President of the Observatorio para la CiberSociedad
For some time now people have been using the term 2.0, associating it with mass intercommunication and the capacity to relate via the web. Can we really say that there is a more social Internet? Is it a real tendency or is the web beginning to move again in a concrete direction?
Many things can be put in the conceptual box of the term 2.0. Aspirations, projects, desires: but there are also realities and tendencies that according to many observers, are marking very important changes in the way in which Internet is constructed and has been reconstructed since approximately 3 years ago.
You mentioned the intercommunication and the capacity to establish relationships as notable characteristics of the 2.0 movement, but we can find other ways to evaluate the process. We can speak about an Internet which is being constructed in a more horizontal way. We could say that accessibility to Internet has been considerably widened thanks to new tools which allow easier access and with less necessity of technical knowledge. We could point out the better usability, capacity and effectiveness of interactivity in the new 2.0 spaces. We could speak about the enormous effect that sites such as YouTube have had on creating a more effective and democratic Internet which is more multimedia and audiovisual based.
But more than a list of characteristics, what I see is that the process of 2.0-isation of the Internet is going to say that those who, in the nighties or the first years of the 21st century, before the crisis of bubble, claimed that the Internet above all is a social space orientated towards sociability were correct.
Years ago, in that Internet which we have now re-baptised disparagingly as 1.0, it seemed as if the key was to convert everything that existed off-line into a new digital environment. It was enough to put the prefix “e” before anything and the new mantras of the digital era appeared: e-economy, e-learning, e-culture, e-administration,e-government. Nevertheless, and as McLuhan would have pointed out, it wasn't a conversion exercise, but a transformation. Internet is a space where paradigms change, and not only the format of things.
For this reason Internet 1.0 had and has certain limits and a very low ceiling of innovation and creativity. And this is why the idea of an Internet 2.0 is so attractive. I have said on many occasions that it seems paradoxical that the ideas behind the 2.0 movement seem more like an Internet 0.1 than Internet 1.0.
If we go back to the ideas, dreams and projects which were sketched out for Internet in the 60s and 70s, we will see that it was conceived as a space for interrelation between people, of significant communication more than the grand boulevard and library-of-Babel in which the Internet, constructed from the end of the Nineties, has been converted.
But it is precisely because of this apparent collapse of significance that we are recovering -now beneath the 2.0 flag, although if we think about it, we have now stopped doing them -- practices and a way to use Internet more socially, more collectively, through multiple new portals and desktop tools which permit a more collective and collaborative Internet experience. Internet has grown with us and around us. It has become omnipresent, excessive, unmanageable and blurred.
For this reason I think that behind the process of 2.0-isation there is, above all, a resizing of Internet. A change of scale. A new net of small size and high significance. An Internet where the person is the protagonist. But not any anonymous person, a distant or ethereal, but our contact, our own network, made up of people who are important to us, from the on and off-line worlds, local and global, recreational and professional, in a free mixture where the principal element is always the person themselves: “You” as highlighted on the cover of Time magazine and Person of the Year 2006.
I think that this is a completely consolidated tendency in as far as anything can be really consolidated in Internet. What is clear is that the 2.0 process is not a fashion, but a creative reaction to the structure of Internet of the late Nineties and the collapse of its significance.
Internet 2.0 is experienced in the first person and is paradoxically, smaller than the previous model. Smaller, but much more significant, given that it is constructed from that which our network of significant people believe is relevant. The 2.0 movement as such, has ephemeral phenomenon and protagonists but it also has roots in which mark and which will mark a turning point in the way in which we consume, experiment, and co-create Internet in the immediate future. It is evident, nevertheless, that Internet 2.1, 3.0 and 4.0 are already being spoken of. The rhetoric of change in Internet is a constant.
You are organising a meeting in Citilab for various experts in the diffusion of information and communication technology, to debate the policies which are being used at the moment to stimulate the use of the Internet amongst the public, companies and educational institutions. How are you planning this meeting?
The fact that we can envisage the knowledge society or Internet 2.0 mustn't make us lose sight of the fact that we haven't managed to extend the use of Internet throughout the immense majority of the population. Many people would say that the first question in this interview represents a completely sterile debate. Nevertheless many of us know that it shouldn't be like this, that Internet is a powerful tool of personal, social, public, recreational and professional growth.
It is really difficult to think of people or groups for whom a knowledge of and use of Internet would not mean a real improvement in their quality of life, in any of the areas I mentioned before. But nevertheless we continue to see a high percentage of the population that has no interest in Internet. For this reason policies and actions which spread the growth of the Internet are still very necessary.
The competitiveness, and the capacity for innovation and growth of our country depends in large part on our capacity to have access to, to use and participate actively in Internet and in the so-called knowledge society.
Also the Internet could boost our capabilities in many areas -- personal, entertainment, organisational, political as well as news and relationships, and this, in a country like ours, is an opportunity that we can not let slip through our hands.
It has to be taken into account that it is not merely a well-intentioned policy, of social inclusion, or of help to groups with difficulties of some type. What we're dealing with is enabling and motivating the majority of the population to be better prepared to be informed, work, produce, innovate, communicate, collaborate etc.
It's more about strategic policy than a policy of assistance. We're not talking about policies to help the helplessly disconnected but a highly strategic dimension which marks and will mark the potential we have and will have as a country in the digital era and the globalised world.
The policies and actions to spread the Internet are as necessary now as they were 10 years ago. However it is very evident that they are not the same policies and actions of 10 years ago that we need put in motion. The context and public perception of Internet has changed greatly during this time and probably the strategies of diffusion of the net and its tools have to be adapted to this new reality.
The great majority of people who these days do not use Internet know perfectly well about its existence. While in 1998 it was the ignorance and the high prices of connection which had to be combated, in 2008 the key is to explain the different Internet which could be important and practical for those groups who consciously remain on the margin.
We want to talk about these things in the meeting. We want to talk about which initiatives and which measures need to be taken to spread Information and Communication Technologies in the era of web 2.0, bearing in mind that people have still not reached 1.0 and also taking into account those who've stopped precisely there. Luckily the participants have a great many years of experience in the subject and can give us some useful clues to sketch out some interesting paths.
The Observatorio para la CiberSociedad is a non-profit organisation which serves as a meeting place between different investigators and academics around the Information and Communication Technologies and their social impact. What have you been doing recently as a network of investigation and diffusion What plans do you have for 2008??
For many years now the Observatorio has been a middle ground between academic investigation, public popularisation and the practice of the Information and Communication Technologies . We are a community of digital knowledge about the technified society, the cybersociety, made up of around 15,000 people from around the world, principally from Spain and Latin America. Although we are a global organisation our headquarters have been in Cornellà for some years and now we are involved in this exciting Citilab project where we hope to have a long and fruitful collaboration.
Our most recent experience was the Online Congress of the Observatorio. At the end of 2006 we organised the third Congress, called “Open Knowledge, Free Society,” and 4500 participants from around the world took part and made a real impact on the world of reflection and investigation about Internet and the Knowledge Society through more than 500 contributions that were presented and debated.
The highlight of 2008 will be our integration and collaboration within Citilab. We want to provide value, networks and a capacity of knowledge generation. As well as meetings such as the one we are preparing for the 21st, we want to re-launch the various areas of content publication and distribution of expert applied knowledge about Information and Communication Technologies.
Amongst other things, in 2008 we want to 2.0 ourselves, so to speak. We intend to reconstruct our virtual community according to the criteria, uses, and customs of Internet 2.0, today's Internet. Our portal, probably the largest space of content and the knowledge about the social Internet in the world, needs a profound digital re-conversion which we hope to carry out this year.
Finally with regards to the next Online Congress of the Observatorio, we are evaluating possibilities and looking for collaborators. It is a project that is constantly growing and the level is more demanding each time. We hope to hold the Congress in Spring 2009 but to put it in motion we need a minimum network of collaborators to guarantee the success of the event. And it is an open project…
