As We May Interact?

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. David Wiley[Edit][Delete]: As We May Interact?, Iterating Toward Openness [Edit][Delete]Iterating toward openness [Edit][Delete] February 21, 2006
David Wiley asks, of Web 2.0 tools, "With the number of users of these tools, and the others in each of these categories, why on earth would we create a new tool in any of these spaces? When critical mass is the single most important part of a network, why would we build another 'walled garden' collection of applications?" Quite right, and the world does not need another walled garden. But I still think we need to explore and understand better the nature of distributed applications. Tools like Flickr, Friendster and Technorati each try to become, if you will, a destination for people, to aggregate as many users as they can. More...