A lot of space has been devoted to Web 2.0 and miles of bits and bytes are available that attempt to explain the concept. I’d like to take a step back from all the technicalities and take a layman’s view of the whole situation.

The internet was basically started by the defense services of the USA for their vested interests. Then some enterprising individuals came along and decided that they should use the web to exchange information.

What followed was a short phase that is often referred to as the dotcom phase of the internet. That was the time when people were setting up small start ups in their garages and putting together solutions for practical problems that businesses encountered.

That was probably the web’s first phase of implementation. It was basically a behind the scenes wizardry that affected all our lives in many ways but didn’t exactly make sense because only your typical neighborhood nerd and his geeky friends understood how it worked.

A lot of the technical tools and gadgets that we use with abandon today were invented then but we didn’t exactly know it at the time and to be honest we didn’t exactly care.

Cut to the year 2007. TIME magazine comes out with its much anticipated issue naming “YOU” as the person of the year.

“YOU”? Who “YOU”? And what does it have to do with the whole web 2.0 thing?

Well the connection between these two events is quite obvious. The average inhabitant of the world that “YOU” represents is none other than people like me and (Excuse the pun) you.

We as a collective are responsible for bringing about the most change in society but for a change in appositive way. And the biggest catalyst that has helped us in this endeavor has been the omniscient internet.

Yes, it is the new age social networks like orkut and facebook along with youtube that have spawned a new wave of information that has helped us to bring about the biggest change that history has ever witnessed.

This is what the second coming or web 2.0 is all about. From being a purely functional tool to becoming the media for social networking and a harbinger of social change the internet has traversed a very long journey from its humble origins.

There are still more frontiers that that the internet has to conquer and it has miles to go before it sleeps. It is to understand the challenges that the net faces and how far it can go that the fourth annual web 2.0 summit is being organized at the palace hotel in October this year.

In keeping with the spirit of web 2.0 the summit is patterned on an interactive format that stresses audience participation and interaction. The basic idea behind the summit is to give all the leading technowizards of our age a chance to be in the same place at the same time so that something fresh can come out of it.

Entry is by invitation only.For more info you can log in to

Lets see how far “YOU” can take Web2.0.

Happy surfing.

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Sunday, September 9th, 2007 at 10:56 pm | by Kur-nia-one |