No! Not another self-absorbed web 2.0 blog post jabbering about web 2.0! How much more of it do we have to take?

Oh, wait, that’s the point of this post. History has shown us that technology never stands still for very long; just about the time we get into a comfortable rut, that’s when the whole Internet ecosystem changes and we shift our habits to make the best of what we have now. Tim Berners-Lee might have said that he had blogs and Wikis in mind when he started the World Wide Web, but how we were supposed to make blogs and Wikis out of six sizes of header and a scrolling blink tag is beyond me.

You remember scrolling blink tags, don’t you? Straight out of HTML hell. That’s how you can tell it’s web 2.0 time, when you haven’t seen blinking, moving text in years.

Nobody thinks stupid HTML tricks are clever anymore. The Internet has passed its infancy and grade school and is now a cynical teenager. It scoffs at anything that isn’t “cool” enough, but what it thinks is cool is simply that which it hasn’t seen before. Badger Badger Mushroom is funny to everybody, the first time they see it. After that, it’s SO 2003!

When will Web 2.0 likewise become antiquated? Will we someday look back on blogs and Wikis and they’ll be as dated as gratuitous animated gifs and background midi music? There is no doubt, but when will it be? That’s the bubble we have to stay ahead of. Because media never goes away, it only changes form. We abandoned those vinyl records and 8-track tapes, but only when CDs and eventually iPods came along. And yet web nostalgia still calls us back, as is evidenced by the popularity of sites like Boing Boing. We’ll never be truly ready to let go of Mario after all, will we?

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/---\
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/---\
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Hey, look! An ASCII car race!

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