Content authoring

Web 2.0 has various characteristics that differentiate it from its immediate predecessor Web 1.0

Perhaps one the main differences beginning to expose itself is the ability to ‘change content’, with given authoring permissions, anybody with enabled access is able to make changes to text and in doing so are able to change the informational characteristics of the text. This is rather obvious perhaps and certainly not new, as many authors often start by reiterating other author’s positions and words. But the ability for anybody to amend or delete a piece of text and consequently alter its meaning ‘moves’ the centre of the ownership of the authoring, and of the meaning of text, out of the private sphere, and relocate its meaning into the sphere of activity carried out in a public domain. Thus making a writer a performer. Whereas before, in the pre-Blogging era, the act of writing was largely considered to be a private relationship with the reader, as the reading followed-on, an appendage to the finished publicised article.

Updated Monday, 12 December 2005