The Next Wave

Tuesday August 22, 2006

Web 2005

I read with interest the blog by Dion Hinchcliffe the other day who was commenting on a rather interesting item that may have gone unnoticed by some, and that was the removal of the phrase "Enterprise 2.0" in Wikipedia (and there was, of course, associated fallout).

Ummm .... wow ...

My first thought was along the lines of some of the posts I found online (generally along the lines of "how dare they!") but upon reflection while this may seem like censorship to some, the fact that the term was entered into Wikipedia, updated/edited and then deleted should be what the "writable web" is all about. What may be different about this (and what may cause the furor) is that what we're dealing with here isn't an additive property (more information) but a subtractive one (in this case the data seems to disappear)... and worse, a seemingly arbitrary one.

(Note: the system does work BTW ... nothing is really ever deleted, it just may not be visible ... and the history of the changes are available if you just take the trouble to look)

I looked through part of the debate on the topic in Wikipedia. Fundamentally, it seems that a Wikipedian editor made a decision that the term was not notable enough and did a speedy deletion based on a prior review of the term. What strikes me as funny is the same argument about being a "neologism of dubious utility" (advice to editors: be wary of the term 'dubious' ... its negative and subjective ... 'unproven' in this case might have been more appropriate) could have been applied to the term "Web 2.0" early in it's lifecycle ...

Why wasn't it, I wonder ? Is it that enough implementation existed within the "web 2.0" space by the time the first Wikipedia entry was created ? (and in case you are curious, that was February 28th, 2005). Or do we actually believe that "web 2.0" was really something new ? Probably, but it does raise the question of who gets to be judge, jury and executioner of what's real and what's not. (I note that the following theory is evidently real enough. Cool ...)

The general point then isn't in my mind that the term "Enterprise 2.0" isn't legitimate or real ... it's whether the name as applied means anything to the people who are building or using it. It's just a name. "Enterprise 2.0" is just as real as "Web 2.0" in that sense. That enterprise architecture and set of ideas (for example, SOA, SaaS, dynamic IT and "web 2.0 technologies") that collectively is called "Enterprise 2.0" should be enough.

It should be noted that I personally prefer the application of the characteristic here rather than a version number (a door is still a door, whether it locks, slides, swings, raises, opens one way or two ways). The underlying model arguably hasn't changed, it's more of how we're using it. The difference in this case is primarily at the endpoints or nodes of the web where (for instance) the server can interpret a much richer request. Whether it's the writeable web or read-write web, it's still the web. This sort of definition by characteristics or behavior to me is much more useful ...

That said, I'm not going to get hung up on the name ... common and accepted usage and practice will be enough for me to move forward ... for now ...

Darn marketing hype ... might as well borrow from commercial branding models and just call it "Web 2005" ...

Posted by brewin Aug 22 2006, 10:19:27 PM PDT Permalink