大象传媒

The Person of the Year is... You

• By Paul Crichton
• 19 Dec 06, 09:32 PM

If confirmation that web 2.0 has arrived, then it comes in the form of Time Magazine announcing that their. To make the point, the magazine had a mirror on its front cover. So take a bow everybody. Its the growth and influence of user generated content on the web that won it. Everybody? Well, not quite. Too many web 2.0 sites still prevent people taking part for access reasons.

It鈥檚 quite exciting for an institution like Time Magazine to recognise the impact and potential of web 2.0, describing it as a 鈥渕assive social experiment鈥�. But the value of that social experiment is undermined if all sections of society cannot participate.

We鈥檝e spoken here before about how web 2.0, or the read-write web, or however you want to describe it, is changing the way we get information. In fact, it鈥檚 not just that we can get information from blogs, wikis and so on, but that we can contribute as well. The world of the web is becoming a two-way medium, where we can all have our say 鈥� at least in theory. Time Magazine suggests that web 2.0 will, 鈥渘ot only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.鈥� That鈥檚 a big claim, but suppose for a minute its correct. It only strengthens the need to make these sites accessible to all.

What is also interesting about Time Magazine is that they aren鈥檛 just paying lip service to web 2.0, with a view to being controversial, but are making use of the opportunities it provides. Managing Editor Richard Stengel, made a video asking for nominations for the award and posted it on YouTube. Thousands of page views resulted, with dozens of nominations and comments. A number of Time鈥檚 correspondents have blogs as well.

If we didn鈥檛 know before, then all of this just goes to illustrate what an important tool web 2.0 is becoming in our daily lives. Which just goes to re-enforce how important it is that these kind of websites are accessible to all. How truly democratic can some of these sites be if they deny some members of society the chance to contribute? How representative of society鈥檚 views can they be? What insights could they be missing?

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