April 9th, 2007
What Web 2.0 silliness and blog code of behavior silliness have in common-it's Tim O'Reilly!
I find it a bit more than curious that the same blogosphere who -with a few exceptions- totally went hook-line-and-sinker for Tim O'Reilly's overgeneralized, marketing-driven Web 2.0 silliness is almost uniformally rejecting Tim's recommendations for a blogger code of behavior he terms Blogging Code of Conduct.
Maybe it's just me, but I see a common thread here- a type of thinking that is obsessively trying to codify trends and behaviors where the need for such codification does not exist.
As I have said in this space before, Web 2.0 doesn't exist. It is an attempt to bunch up a group of lurching-forward technologies under a common theme.
And as I say now, the blogosphere doesn't need no code of conduct. I try to conduct myself with a journalist's code of ethics, but that doesn't mean you, your nephew with the MySpace page who rants about a girl at school who wouldn't be friendly, or even journalist/blogger turned entrepreneur Bambi Francisco needs to stick to some damn code of conduct if they don't feel like it.
And as for being polite? I mean, if you want to write that, oh, 9-11 was a false flag operation, or that broadband service providers are paying regulators, or how much you would love it a falling meteorite would land on Karl Rove's car- or Steve Ballmer's car, for that matter- that may not be a nice thing to say but it doesn't mean you should take Scout's honor that you won't say that if that's what you really think.
Or, if you want to push broader conspiracy theories, in which everyone in power is a plot architect or bought off, that's your right as a member of the Internet, as well.
So the hell with Web 2.0 and a damn Blogging Code of Conduct!! Let's keep the Internet unruly, and technology unclassifiable!!
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
