Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0

First Monday, a peer-reviewed online journal about the Internet that is hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago, has just published its most recent issue devoted to a critical analysis of the web 2.0 phenomenon (or hype?).

In his preface to the issue, Michael Zimmer, the Microsoft Resident Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, writes:

"It [the rhetoric surrounding web 2.0]suggests that everyone can and should use new Internet technologies to organize and share information, to interact within communities, and to express oneself. It promises to empower creativity, to democratize media production, and to celebrate the individual while also relishing the power of collaboration and social networks."

"But Web 2.0 also embodies a set of unintended consequences, including the increased flow of personal information across networks, the diffusion of one’s identity across fractured spaces, the emergence of powerful tools for peer surveillance, the exploitation of free labor for commercial gain, and the fear of increased corporatization of online social and collaborative spaces and outputs."