Everything is mucilaginous

I just want to meet Rashmi, that’s why I’m going on like this…

Web 1.0 was all about linking and searching, publishing and presenting, and of course there was commercial activity from online banking to retail sales and auctioneering.  Web 2.0 is not here yet but some think it is emerging out of the fog of the future through ripples of Skype and MMPORGs, rapids of BitTorrent and foamy drifts of tags.  It seems self-serving of someone to aver that Web 2.0 has anything to do with a Technorati feed on Newsweek.  It seems in fact sort of, I dunno… retro?  Web 2.0 seems more about progress toward that Isenbergian ideal of dumbing down the center and smartening up of the edges of the net.  Never mind that infrastructure pieces that route Gigabit ethernet over MPLS or SONET or whatever are hairy smart components…  what the Weinbergerites and the Isenbergians are talking about is not having a bunch of databases in there driving authentication and billing.  All that infrastructure provides a commodity and the commodity is called throughput.  Don’t be inspecting my packets Mr. Bell.  That’s content and that’s all you need to know.  You pipeline it, we’ll use it.  We’ll bundle up and unbundle the content at the edges.  You just provide the transport.

Thus we have the vision of a vast peer to peer network that comprises Web 2.0.  I must ask, "What’s Newsweek got to do with it?"

Compumentor is a non-profit outfit that distributes tech tools to other non-profits and NGOs. They are planning to "Internet empower" those customers.  This will potentiate freedom of speech, freedom of virtual assembly, empowerment writ large, writ global. 

This has the potential of empowering communities that have never had a free press.  It’s exciting and I’m in.  The NetSquared site says there are 209 days to the event.  How many blawgers, journalists, teachers and techies and geeks have the stones to offer up a little pro bono service for a good thing?

Incentive? You want incentive?  April 26th there’s going to be a "blow-out party… entertainment, food and drink."    I think there might be music and dancing and stumbling around in the parking lot.  At least that is what I would expect.  On the 27th they promise aspirins and wi-fi and comfort food and a chance to deepen those relationships….