"Dreams of a New Medium" - by Aden Evans
Evens' starts by relating his whole idea with Marshall McLuhan's description of technology as an 'extension of ourselves'. He discusses the effects of web 1.0 and web 2.0. Thus by doing so, he explains the connection between web activities such as apping, blogging, mapping, mashing, geocaching, tagging, searching, shopping, sharing, socializing and more. For me this text was very confusing because Evans goes directly into the issue without correctly explaining his topic. All along as I was reading, I never really understood the connection between web 1.0, web 2.0 and apparently 'web 3'. He makes the readers believe web 2 to be a sort of event. As for McLuhan's 'extension of ourselves', I believe Evans tries to show that we are computers. Technology has become humans and humans are slowly transforming into technological databases. The internet or as he refers to it as the 'web' through out is the best way of displaying and accessing information:
"If the fundamental proteanism of the digital perplexes its ready categorization as a simple medium, the World Wide Web offers a complex counterpoint to the computer's recalcitrance. For no digital technology more than the Web can claim to be a (new) medium. We obtain news and information on the Web. We watch video and listen to music. We publish and distribute fiction and analysis on the Web. We shop, make art, and pass the time on the Web. Understood in terms of these and its many other functions, the Web is a medium." In other words, the internet cannot be surpassed by any other technological advancement.
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