How to tell 1.0 from 2.0.

It's not just a question of zeitgeist, though to a certain extent there's no doubt that that's part of it as well. O'Reilly readily admits that the roots of some of the key characteristics of Web 2.0 can be found in its earlier version. But if they spring up often enough, we can classify certain buzzwords as identifying aspects of the new web. These are spelled out by O'Reilly, but a shortlist (chosen by me, and not necessarily the core characteristics O'Reilly, or others, might choose) can be offered here. We're dealing with terms like:

architecture of participation
user added value
the wisdom of crowds
design for hackability and remixability.

Included in all this, an integral, perhaps central, part of it, is ease of use. Even if we can readily get the impression that the people actually using all the tools that are the functional expression of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 are people with technical backgrounds and an attraction to playing around with tools of this sort, we're always being told that using these tools is simple. You don't have to know a programming language to make use of them. If it has too high a learning curve, it's probably not Web 2.0.

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