I [saw this linked](http://fourteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-096-the-digital-given-10-web-2-0-theses/) from [Brian's](http://blogs.ubc.ca/brian/) [delicious feed](http://www.delicious.com/blamb). [A set of theses](http://fourteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-096-the-digital-given-10-web-2-0-theses/) that help to frame hype around Web 2.0.
It starts off with:
> The internet turns out to be neither the problem nor the solution for the global recession. As an indifferent bystander it doesn't lend itself easily as a revolutionary tool. The virtual has become the everyday. The New Deal is presented as green, not digital. The digital is a given. This low-key position presents an opportunity to rethink the Web 2.0 hype. How might we understand our political, emotional and social involvement in internet culture over the next few years?
and this
> Networking sites are social drugs for those in need of the Human that is located elsewhere in time or space. It is the pseudo Other that we are connecting to. Not the radical Other or some real Other.
on the overpowering "friendliness" of Web 2.0:
> We are addicted to ghettoes, and in so doing refuse the antagonism of ‘the political'. Where is the enemy? Not on Facebook, where you can only have ‘friends'. What Web 2.0 lacks is the technique of antagonistic linkage. Instead, we are confronted with the Tyranny of Positive Energy. Life only consists of uplifting experiences. Depression is not a design principle. Wikipedia's reliance on ‘good faith' and its policing of protocols quite frequently make for a depressing experience in the face of an absence of singular style. There ain't no ‘neutral point of view'. This software design principle merely reproduces the One Belief System. Formats need to be transformed if they are going to accommodate the plurality of expression of networked life. Templates function as zones of exclusion. But strangely, they also exclude the conflict of the border. The virus is the closest thing to conflict online. But viruses work in invisible ways and function as a generator of service labour for the computer nerd who comes in and cleans your computer.
on freedom and openness:
> Web 2.0 is not for free. ‘Free as in free beer' is not like ‘free as in freedom'. Open does not equal free. These days ‘free' is just another word for service economies. The linux fiefdom know that all too well. We need to question naïve campaigns that merely promote ‘free culture' without questioning the underlying parasitic economy and the ‘deprofessionalization' of cultural work. Pervasive profiling is the cost of this opening to ‘free market values'. As users and prosumers we are limited by our capacity as data producers. Our tastes and preferences, our opinions and movements are the market price to pay.
on privacy and identity:
> To avoid the double trap of blind technophilia and luddite technophobia, we have to develop complex digital identities. They have to answer to individual desires and satisfy multiple needs. Open-ID are a good starting point. ‘Steal my profile'. It's time to remix identity. Anonymity is a good alternative to the pressures of the control society, but there must be alternatives on offer.
Definitely [take the time to read the entire set of 10 (+1) theses](http://fourteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-096-the-digital-given-10-web-2-0-theses/).