The undesirable social impacts of a Web 2.0 world
An image instantly popped into my head as I reviewed the impressive list of
the major participants of this year's
Web 2.0 Conference - their polar opposites. I saw in my mind the generation of Dot-Com busts. One of the collateral things that I hope doesn't arise when Web 2.0 really starts to take off with the masses is the insane rush by any and every would-be entrepreneur to get involved with it, as was evident with the web gold rush of the late 1990's (I'm referring to the legion of failures, not those listed in the Conference).
The one quality that made the e-commerce industry such a great thing - limitless opportunity - I believe also caused, in part, its downfall.
Remember how things were in those days? Everyone who claimed to be "a FrontPage expert" or passed the MCSE exams or knew at least three IT acronyms, regardless of formal education, proper training or business savvy, and whether they really "got" what being on the web meant, wanted to start their own company and instantly appoint themselves CEO. Each one of these people wanted to turn their communities into the next Silicon Valley, and were quick to let you know that (there were tons of guys like this in Guam...stress the "were"). Or, barely with a year of college under their belt, they wanted to work for a company on the verge of going public and worship at the altar of the almighty IPO and retire by 30. As a result, we've got a generation of misinformed wannabes who are still to this day still struggling to make it, now too proud to humble themselves and work for someone else at entry level; a result of their own lack of focus, lack of vision and lack of effort.
The biggest business hurdle in the Web 1.0 world was translation - understanding how to express logistical models in a purely online environment. If you could bullshit your way around this to a customer or venture capitalist, you'd be a part of something special. Today and going into the future concepts and models that are much more complex are the governing dynamics. Things like public APIs, syndication, open source models, social networking, harnessing the true power of data, loose coupling, The Long Tail, and distributing software as services aren't for the faint of heart and won't tolerate being managed by the ill-advised or improperly motivated. Hopefully, this complexity will produce a de facto shakedown enough to only allow the truly worthy in the club. At least initially.
The Web 2.0 economy is going to be way too intricate for such foolishness, and even in a capitalist macroeconomy we can't afford to permit the same mistakes. I'm hoping for a self-policing structure that mandates the right people get in on the action first, lest we be inundated with a community of semi-learned fools mucking it all up.