Robert Cox thinks that the right has a "Web 2.0 problem." I have said before about the Web, this is not really the case. To a large extent, what Cox is upset about is propagandizing at Google, but that has nothing to do with Web 2.0. That is nothing more than an application of old political methods to a new technology, and not even using the newest one at that. There is little difference between much of what gets lumped into "Web 2.0" and what could be called "Web 1.0" except for the style of the delivery, but I digress.
Let's say that the right does what Cox suggests and admits that it has a "Web 2.0 problem." It isn't going to find an easy solution because conservatives are generally not prone to being attracted to the fields which would enable them to do something about this hypothetical problem. Even if that were accounted for, I don't think that it would be easy to get people on the right to actually build something better and more reliable than Wikipedia. Aside from religious apologetics websites and such, the right is not very well known for building online resources of that nature.
Personally, I think the backlash in schools against Wikipedia may end up alleviating whatever problems might arise from this. Many schools are already blacklisting it, as they regard Wikipedia as garbage.
Again I wish this meant something to me. Even after re-reading over the post - I'm clueless.
Yes, I said that ;)
I'm with WW on this one.
I am sure it is important to someone, but I don't know why.
I wouldn't say that it's particularly important to me, either. However, this is IMO, the sort of technical illiteracy that ends up hurting a lot of people on the right. He doesn't even know what Web 2.0 really is, but he knows it's dangerous!
OK, meybe I can elucidate some of the obtuse concerns about web 2.0.
The Alex Jones segment of the "new media" indicate that it's a way of severely restricting the bandwith and centralizing control of the internet into "tubes" in the the hands of few college campuses and other "authorities", essentially rendering webcasting insurmountable to to the average joe. Any truth in all this?
Actually, in this case the issue at hand is simply web sites like Wikipedia. The author didn't even bother to talk about bandwidth issues, which are likely to be as big of an issue for the left as they are for the right because we know how corporations are with opinions that are not purely pragmatic.
Right now, the only major problem is advertising and funding in general. There is no reliable way to get it, the way that TV stations can. It's a problem that I noticed a long, long time ago with Internet advertising. Since it's so open-ended, it's harder for small websites to gain branding of any sort that would make them attractive to advertisers.