From Web 2.0 to 2nd Life: the Ultimate Consensus or an Aggregation of the Mediocre?
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Since blogs, Wikis, Flickrs and YouTubes and all their numerous wannabes have gone mainstream we have come to recognize how the social tools that characterize Web 2.0 are more a paradigm shift in the way we use the Internet, rather than simply a new set of standards or services. At the same time, the folk are not simply tagging their way through bookmarks, video collections and online diaries, they are also moving into new kinds of online real estate where life is immersive, persuasive and, at times, highly lucrative.
This presentation will look at the social tools that enable novel kinds of distribution, participation and aggregation and will examine the ways in which memory institutions - museums, libraries and archives - are located within these evolving spaces. Through a series of case studies we will look at some of the issues that surface when an avatar's jewelry needs copyright protection; when critical aggregations of micro-content are tagged together in unruly clouds, and when certain museums, once mobilized in 3D worlds have enough credibility to be able to take on a [second] life of their own.
While museums, archives and libraries built initially upon their professional legacies from their physical counterparts as they migrated to the World Wide Web, Web 2.0 spaces are fervently building their new legacies upon the folk. This presentation queries whether these new iterations achieve similar measures of trust and professionalism as they evolve out of the ultimate consensus or whether they merely end up as an excess of superfluous micro-content and an aggregation of the mediocre.
Dr. Susan Hazan is the Curator of New Media and Head of the Internet Office at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem and Founding Partner of Digital Heritage, Israel. Hazan is Curator of New Media and Head of the Internet Office at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem and Founding Partner of Digital Heritage, Israel. Her Masters and PhD at Goldsmiths College, University of London in Media and Communications focused on electronic architectures in the contemporary museum. Hazan has published numerous publications on new media in education, art, and museums and regularly presents at international conferences. In 2002-2003 was visiting lecturer at the Computing Department at Goldsmiths, University of London teaching Web Design and Critical E-Museology, with an emphasis on the correlation between cultural theory and contemporary practice and visiting lecture in the Museology Department at Haifa University, Israel. |