step #9~and now it's time for "deep thought" with little miss librarian.

okay so step #9 is all about telling you...my oh so faithful readers(all 3 of you:)...how i feel about web 2.0. i think i have pretty much shared my thoughts over the last 9 steps but whatever...maybe i have something new to say...maybe not...i think it is safe to say that the basics of web 2.0 is sharing. wikipedia, blogs, flickr, facebook..you name it, it is all based on the principle of sharing. i think web 2.0 is a fun and super fabulicious way of sharing with your friends and family. i like that i can write one story on my blog, post a picture one time on flickr, update my status once on facebook and they can all check it out when they want to. i'm not doing 3 zillion different things 3 zillion different times for 3 zillion diferent people(3 zillion being a very accuret number. i am totally not exagerating) it gives you the opportunity to express yourself and be creative in a place where your peers can see it all together. on a bigger level, outside of my little friendship group, web 2.0 also give us as a society the opportunity to make a fuller use of the experties of other people to better educate ourselves and really exploit our intellectual and creative resources. wiki's, mashup, folksonomies and the like give us the chance to tap into resources(aka smart people) who would otherwise be left behind for whatever reason. it makes the information world a more level playing field...as long as there is some dude smart enough to create the softwear or whatever required we can all tag along and use it to share whatever we are smart at. but it does mean you are sharing things in a very public way. some sceptics really focus on this and sure sharing naturally leads to privacy issues and sure it has the potential to be "dangerous" but so do credit cards. just like we keep our wallet close to us and don't share our pin pass number with our neighbour we need to make sure the information we share in a public forum...be it a blog, wiki, social community, flickr, whatever...isn't more revealing then we are willing to be and isn't an unnecissary risk. and yes there is the issue of people thinking they are smarter then they actually are and sharing things that are better left in the dark. what can you do about that? about the same thing we can do about the daily news we read in the newspaper or see on the tv...you get the good with the bad and thus we need to be critical about what we read, see, experience through web 2.0 just the way we are critical about what we accept as actual news...like the sun verses the globe and mail and even then you have to read the globe with a critical eye. i'm sure i have missed things. i'm sure i have said things that are inflammatory or that i have contradicted myself in some way. i'm sure my ideas will change at some point and i have just shared some not so smart ideas with the public world...read it with a critical eye and consider the source...little miss librarian is no web 2.0 expert she is really just a sheep attempting to stay with the flock.