The new seekers

Wednesday, 10th October 2007

David Jennings says that Web 2.0 will enrich our cultural lives immeasurably.

What is more, one of the obligations inherent in anarchy is that people have to do more for themselves. Web 2.0 is not just another way of serving up a cultural menu to guide consumption in the way that a TV network controller or radio playlister might do. It’s best understood as a self-service environment dotted with many different clues to steer you in the direction of things that might interest you. Of course it is true that self-service leaves greater scope for making dumb decisions (though there are Web 2.0 equivalents of nanny guidance and stabiliser wheels for those deemed to need them). But it does not mean dumbing down across the board.

Discovery itself is an anarchic and unruly activity: it loves to slip through cracks, disappearing down rabbit holes and making associative leaps between material that may not at first appear to be connected. We all know the pleasure of arriving at the work of a new favourite author, composer or film-maker via what seems an incredibly circuitous path or a chance mention from a friend. It is our natural inquisitiveness that leads us to root out these new discoveries, foraging in the areas that appear most fertile in terms of our tastes.

And it’s the self-directed, unpredictable, anarchic nature of such explorations that will stymie any Big Brother-type ambitions that may underpin Google and Amazon’s personalised services. Certainly, as so many of our choices and activities are recorded, there will be plenty of legitimate concerns about privacy of personal data. One of the things Web 2.0 is doing is renegotiating the contract between media businesses and audience to take it beyond simple payment for goods and services. Since ‘attention profiling’ data is so valuable to those who have something to sell, audiences will be given better offers in return for details about what they listen to, watch, rate and classify. This data will be used to help them make discoveries that match their interests, and sometimes it will be used for targeted advertising. Often it will be difficult to tell the two apart. Which is why audiences of the future, increasingly wise to these techniques and the new media environment, will take them all with a pinch of salt.