Oh NOOOOO... Web 2.0!

While surfing through the internet, I tripped over this. Tim, the Boomer-age author, is commenting on the Net Gen use of YouTube and suggests that Net Gens prefer a 2-D version of live music over an actual live performance. He goes on to mention the observations of a show MC, who expressed surprise over the number of people in the audience of a live Jake Shimabukuro concert.

Tim states, "Call me a baby boomer -but I just can’t get the same vibe sitting in from of a computer in a lonely study at home."

I don't think Tim, nor the MC, is quite understanding how Web 2.0 (or Net Gens) work.

Let's say Sarah is at home browsing through her friends' Myspace profiles. She discovers that her friend Mike has a Jake Shimabukuro song on her Playlist.com jukebox. Sarah wants to know more about Jake, so she does a YouTube search and finds several Jake Shimabukuro videos. She quite likes Jake's music, so she Twitters and tells everybody about Jake. Sarah receives an IM from her friend Vicky who tells her she saw Sarah's Twitter, and she searched for and found Jake on Facebook's iLike app. She's added a couple of videos to her FB profile. Vicky's friend Aimee sees in her FB News Feed that Vicky has added Jake Shimabukuro videos to her profile, so she goes and watches them. Aimee likes Jake, too, so she goes to her iTunes store and downloads a couple of his songs. This all happens in a span of about 15 minutes.

Soon, Jake comes to town to give a concert at a local festival. Sarah, Mike, Vicky, and Aimee all know each other from online interactions, and organize a trip to the concert via a Facebook event. They discover that 100 more of their friends all discovered Jake Shimabukuro through their collective Twittering, FBing, Myspacing, IMing and texting. 104 people show up at the concert who wouldn't otherwise have been there if it weren't for the collaboration offered by Web 2.0 tools.

The MC is surprised how many people are there, as many educators would be surprised to see how many of my students are actively participating in the FB group for our class, posting their own photos and writing way beyond anything I expected them to write. What the MC, Tim, and educators don't understand is that Web 2.0 isn't hindering anything; Web 2.0 is a way to facilitate and encourage communication, negotiation and meaning making within and between peer communities successfully and in a rapid manner. Even so, Web 2.0 shoudn't be viewed as a panacea, but rather a bridge over a gap.