In the “Technically Speaking” article of October 2006’s IEEE Spectrum Magazine, Paul McFedries speaks of a new term surfacing to counter the whole “Web 2.0” crap that’s going around. Web 2.0 always smacked of marketing to me – a way to get investors to put money into some kind of upgrade to the Internet. “Oh, we’re doing TWO-POINT-OH stuff here, none of that Web 1.0 stuff.” Of course, as my readers know, the whole point behind Web 2.0 is the blog/AJAX/flickr/etc interface where the users create and modify each others’ content. McFedries reports a few good Geeks who have responded by rebranding “Web 2.0” as “chmod 777 web”. All of my Linux/Unix readers will get this instantly and start cracking up. For the rest of you, this is the way, in *nix, where you say that a file or folder can now be read, modified, and executed by the owner of the file, everyone in his group, and everyone else. Basically, you’ve just made it into a Windows-style file.
Enjoy, and may “Web 2.0” die a quick death!
One response to “Die Web 2.0!”
I *did* laugh at that chmod 777 stuff. I’m going to remember to spread that.
I’m probably the only geek who likes the Web 2.0 buzzword. It’s just that I use it to mean “the modern web” and also the “modern technology freedom movement”. CSS, AJAX, and blogs and all that just weren’t around when the web broke out in a big way in 1995. And why doesn’t Internet Explorer support PNG transparency and render CSS correctly and use VBScript instead of Javascript? Because it’s a “Web 1.0 browser”, naturally. Then you can turn around and use it mockingly – “You redid the page in Fischer Price colors? How Web 2.0 of you.” Another one of those context-sensitive terms.
Can’t wait to see the Jargon file take on it.