Interesting throughts from Scott Karp on Web 2.0, or what he calls the Zen of Web 2.0.

As I’m reading his post, I think I can summerize it this way: The Web is inherently a social environtment. The Web changes the way we interact and the way media works. Web 2.0 is not the revolution. The Web is the revolution. We have shifted from pre-networked ways of thinking to interconnected information and interactions.

I haven’t totally parsed this statement though:

Understanding how participation in the network enhances the value of the network is the Zen of 2.0.

I think he’s making a sort of Metcalfe’s Law statement, but that doesn’t strike me as Zen. And I’m not sure it meshes with Scott’s Zen formulation in this post on Google.

If there is a Zen here, I think it does revolve around pure and simple social and informational interactions made possible by networked technology. I’m just not sure if that’s what Scott is saying.

UPDATE: Of course, not everybody embraces the Web 2.0 world, as noted in this
post
by Nick Carr. Most people just don’t have time.

I started writing some thoughts along these lines in this post, but went in a different
direction. I did that primarily because I was feeling too lazy to look up
stats on current blog usage and social networking usage vs. the general net population,
but I pretty much know that the percentage of usage is relatively small — though
growing fast. My thought, which is purely anecdotal, is that a lot of people
still view Web media as just traditional media. They surf sites and read or
view content, and that’s it.

But that doesn’t mean social media is a crock, just that it’s not everything.