Starting something new...

This diagram is yet another reason to hate 'web 2.0'

... and hopefully exciting. It's something I've been talking about now for quite some time, long before I started this here blog. A few people initially wanted me to get my ass on the internet and partake in some web 2.0 shenanigans. Yeah, I too hate the phrase web 2.0 (I quite like the word Shenanigans), but as Lauby said in my interview with him for the HoP Idol contest, people do at least know what you're going on about when you use it. No matter how irksome you might find it as a phrase. If you don't know what I'm on about, well basically it's all about user created content. Things created by the great unwashed, you and me providing the content rather than the normal channels, sources, media etc. producing it and us all just consuming it passively. It's about getting involved and doing it for yourselves, a bit like 'sisters'! Encouraging a state where we all have a voice, no matter how annoying.

I'm going to be blunt here. I hated the idea of web 2.0, the idea that idiots like me could add our own voice to the already bewildering vortex of static and noise, and add yet more confusion to the message being transmitted, it just seemed like a bad idea. I found most wargaming forums pretty damn frustrating experiences, full of people who were convinced they were right. Rather than accept the fact that they were just somebody with an opinion, oh no, they believed they were right. Yeah, sure we all think our opinions are right, otherwise we wouldn't hold them, but when we call them opinions we accept the possibility that some new information could come along that could change our opinions somehow, and we might learn something new. If we start believing our opinions are fact, as is so often the case with forum dwellers, we preclude the possibility that they might change, and in short accept that we are living in a state of general ignorance, and for me this is where web 2.0 was heading. Jake Thornton has had problems with this intransigent attitude.
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