Class Description: Web 2.0 -- The Cultures and Technologies of the Programmable Web
Popularized in 2004 by the media guru Tim O'Reilly, Web 2.0 signaled a fundamental shift in the way users interacted with web applications and how they produced web content. Instead of just "consuming" content from static web pages (Web 1.0), the new generation of web applications fostered the creation and remixing of user-generated content, the harnessing of collective intelligence, open source models for development, and real-time collaboration. One need only think of the explosion of social networking applications such as Facebook and Twitter, aggregation sites such as YouTube or Digg that use crowd-sourcing to organize and rank content, or the radically open and participatory structure of knowledge-generation and sharing sites such as Wikipedia or Craigslist. The purpose of this Fiat Lux seminar is to investigate both the technologies and the cultural/social implications of Web 2.0. Finally, what will Web 3.0 bring? Here, we will examine the semantic web, the impact of pervasive computing, the mobile web, cloud computing, and the deepening connection between virtual reality and augmented reality.
This class will be taught by Todd Presner (Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature, UCLA) and Quan Nguyen (4th Year, Bioengineering major, UCLA). Presner is the former faculty chair of the Center for Digital Humanities and has won several grants in digital humanities, including the ACLS "digital innovation" award and the "digital media and learning" prize from the MacArthur foundation. He is the director of the digital mapping project, HyperCities, a sophisticated Google Maps/Earth mash-up that allows users to travel back in time and browse historical cities by space and time. A graduating senior, Quan has worked for Symantec's Global Online Store (SMB) and researching the state of solar project financing for SolarTech, a non-for-profit trade association, and the California Energy Commission.
Contact: presner@ucla.edu or quan.nguyen.biz@gmail.com
(and sometimes twitter.com/quanyewest)
Class Meetings: Class meets every Wednesday, 12-12:50 PM in Humanities A48. Office Hours are Wednesday mornings, 10-12 in 329 Royce Hall.
Class Requirements: Please try to attend every class since this course is run as seminar and your participation is critical. All students are required to post or respond to one blog post per week (on the discussion topic of the week, on relevant websites/news, or the weekly readings/film clips). Also, all students are required to make a brief (10-15 minute) presentation in small groups during week 10. The final presentations will be a business plan/project proposal to a group of (fictitious) Venture Capitalists to get your "great idea" for a Web 3.0 application funded in the amount of $5M. Teams will create a short power-point presentation that will include answers to the following questions: What's your great idea? Why hasn't it been invented yet? Who is your target user base? What will the product do that no one else is doing? How would you spend $5M in start-up funds? What technologies will be used (or invented)?
Tentative Syllabus:
April 7-- Introduction: What is Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0? Where are we and where are we going?
In preparation for our first class meeting: Think about examples of Web 2.0 applications and what they do... Try to read the classic statement by Tim O'Reilly on Web 2.0 Design Patterns.
April 14 -- "The Revolution will be Twittered" -- Tehran election protests and user-generated media (YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, etc).
* Study the Day-by-day mapping of the election protests in HyperCities and watch as many of the YouTube Videos as you can.
Andrew Sullivan Blog, "The Revolution will be Twittered"
Youtube video describing the project
Permalink to this collection in HyperCities
Technologies: AJAX -- Discussion by Jesse Garrett, the Inventor of AJAX
April 21: The Rise of Social Media/Social Networking -- Why are we addicted to Facebook?
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS, "It Takes a Village: Behind Facebook's Success"
Ted Talk: Alexis Ohanian- How to make a splash in social media (4 mins)
In a funny, rapid-fire 4 minutes, Alexis Ohanian of Reddit tells the real-life fable of one humpback whale's rise to Web stardom. The lesson of Mister Splashy Pants is a shoo-in classic for meme-makers and marketers in the Facebook age
Mark Zuckerman on Facebook -- Video to Developers (click to go)
April 28: Crowd-Sourcing Everything -- The new wiki-economy where everyone gets to blog their opinion (Yelp)
Wikipedia Statistics and the Wiki Revolution in Higher Education-- It's not "what you know"; it's how you find, evaluate, and compose what you need to know!
The reconfiguration of higher education and the rise of "Digital Humanities" (read the "Digital Humanities Manifesto")
Ted Talk: Howard Rheingold on Collaboration
Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action -- and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group.
May 5: All That's Solid Melts into Thin Air -- The Reign of Cloud Computing
On the Disintegration of the Desktop:
TED Talk: Kevin Kelly- on the next 5,000 days of the web (Can be used to talk about Web 3.0 as well)
May 12: Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
Locative Technologies: Here, Now, Gone -- Networking by real space, real time: Loopt, 4 Square
Learn about the "Transborder Immigrant Tool" (using mobile phones and GPS to help immigrants find water and safely cross the US-Mexican border).
Jan Chipchase on our mobile phones
May 19: Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality Mark-up Language (ARML): Marking up the real world.
Internet of Things - IBM's Take
The Future Internet: Service Web 3.0
May 26 -- no class; however, all student groups will be meeting with the instructors to discuss their "business plan" and final presentation.
June 2 -- Two-Hour class (probably over dinner, treated by Prof Presner)
Web 1.0
ReplyDelete-- Like reading a book (delivers content); expert creates content
-- broadcast media (TV, Radio, Museum, print), passive consumption of content
-- trade secrets as business model (protective); don't release the source code
Web 2.0
-- User-created content, participatory (hosts content)
-- Social orientation; everyone can participate, creation of content, active.
-- Community monitored
-- Sharing as business model -- release code and content (APIs); app-store; open source software (you can see and tailor the source code)
-- Real-time, real-space
Web 3.0 -- think about this!
http://lesbianswholooklikejustinbieber.tumblr.com/
ReplyDeletejust sayin'...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_wguy/20100407/tc_ytech_wguy/ytech_wguy_tc1510
ReplyDeleteJust an article I found on Yahoo News about net neutrality.
Here's an interesting article regarding the two sides that President Candidate's Barack Obama and John McCain took on the Net Neutrality issue:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/news/4286547?series=46.
Obama is for net neutrality where McCain is against net neutrality. Obviously, we don't really need to know what McCain thinks now that Obama is President but it's interesting nonetheless.
After thinking more about web 2.0 and what differentiates it from web 1.0, I realized that Web 2.0 has the potential to offer better information and services because of the ability for user participation. With sites like Yelp, for example, customer reviews have led companies to improve their products or services in order to receive better reviews and in turn more clients. For example my friend owns a hair salon which generally receives rave reviews but recently got a yelp review that was completely negative. Instead of ignoring this review she went out of her way to respond to this person and even offered to pay for her to get her hair done somewhere else. Although this example is on a small scale this same mentality can apply to any company. Because users can contribute to the information shared on Web 2.0, the public in turn is provided with the best information available.
ReplyDeleteHere's just an article i found on twitter:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/technology/12twitter.html
The transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 has opened so many doors in terms of greater participation from users across the net. While we touched on this briefly in class, I've gotten some insight from UCLA Computer Science students and they have some interesting ideas on the future of Web 3.0. According to them and research I've done online, it seems as though Web 3.0 will involve computers becoming more intelligent and sharing more information amongst themselves. If Web 2.0 opened up the possibilities for individuals to share information with other individuals, it makes sense that one of the next evolutions will involve computers sharing more information with other computers in order to better communicate and facilitate information sharing. I ultimately believe that Web 3.0 will make it even easier for users to share information and truly build upon the success of Web 2.0
ReplyDeleteI stumbled upon this site: http://www.howstuffworks.com/web-30.htm
ReplyDeletewhich gives a short introduction to web 3.0 and what kind of road lies ahead for web 3.0.
After reading the article and some of the comments above, I think we can already see Web 3.0's impact on current hardware design such as on the iPad, netbooks, etc. Portability is the the key to these designs, which are becoming ever more popular (See: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/04/14/business-technology-hardware-amp-equipment-us-apple-mover_7513819.html)
Being portable allows us to carry internet accessible devices with us at all times and incorporating 2/3/4G access to these devices, such as the iPad, seems to be the way of the future.
Here's an article I found on Web 3.0: http://internet.suite101.com/article.cfm/what_is_web_30
ReplyDeleteIt crossed my mind that Web 2.0 has also, as a side effect, started bringing in a younger audience to the web. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Blogspot and the like have been geared towards the masses and, as a result, more efforts have been made to make interfaces that are as user-friendly as possible - so anyone can jump on the bandwagon.
ReplyDeleteOn another sort-of related note, a lot of the businesses behind Web 2.0 were started by college students in their dorms. In recent years we've seen the rise of many young entrepreneurs who either integrated this revolutionary idea for their businesses or were became the ones pushing it forward. Just look at Google.
The video done by Rheingold is very interesting in that it is able to relate the nature of web 2.0 and all of its features to the many differing disciplines such as economics and biology. By comparing the cooperative nature to biology, I was reminded of the class in which someone mentioned that Twitter in particular, although it can be applied to the other things on the internet, is not revolutionary, but evolutionary. This statement seems to fit in very well with Rheingold's analogies with the hunters and gatherers and the start of civilization. It is interesting to see just how the internet can relate to the differing aspects of life because often times we take it for granted and do not realize just how revolutionary/evolutionary it is.
ReplyDeleteThe video in the internet of things is very interesting because i never really thought about all of the different sources of data being transmitted and received that are present in our lives other then from the computers and other electronic devices that are readily seen. It's intriguiing to think of the where we are going to end up in the future in terms of connectivity
ReplyDelete