When first hearing the term Web 2.0 I thought that this would be something that I would know absolutely nothing about, something that I would imagine would be the same response from the majority of people. However, as soon as I started to read READER 1 I realised that Web 2.0 is something that I use on a daily, or even hourly basis. Web 2.0 refers to interactive internet sites which are considered as active rather than passive - active meaning the reader physically engages with the site and passive referring to sites where the reader engages with the information mentally rather than physically responding.
Web 2.0 is something that, as I have previously said, I use on a daily basis. I use sites such as Facebook, and more recently Blogger and Flickr, not only for social use but also for my professional practice and to support my further education. Though initially I was a very active user of Facebook I now consider myself as a passive user in many respects as rather than physically interacting with the posts of others or sharing my own personal news, I now use Facebook to read what my friends are up to. One of the main reasons for this is due to my profession. As I work as a teacher, both in a secondary school and a stage school, the majority of my students are very active users of Facebook and though I have my security settings on their most secure, the more 'tech-savvy' students that I come into contact with have found ways to view my page. Therefore, I have stopped to share information through this Web 2.0 site in order to maintain complete professionalism. To follow on from this another key reason why I have given up using Facebook actively, something also touched upon by Iona Holland in her response to READER 1, is due to the fact that, especially in the education sector, employers are known to use Web 2.0 sites to research potentially employees. Though I personally would never post anything that would compromise my professionalism, the site allows others to link my page to various posts without my consent, something that I will come back to comment further on, which in turn could then be viewed by potential employers.
In my opinion this is not the only thing that is bad in relation to Web 2.0 sites. Though the sites are supposed to encourage social interaction I am not entirely sure that they really do. Currently I have over 550 friends on Facebook, which is 550 lives that I can tap into and interact with, at my choosing, at any point throughout my day. Tapping in to those 550 lives takes time, time which could be spent communicating and socialising with people that I interact with face-to-face. In my opinion, Web 2.0 sites has supported the transition of today's society into a 'plugged-in' society. A society which is constantly connected to the cyber world rather than interacting with the world that it is directly in connected to.
With this being said there are still an awful lot of positives that come along with the wide use of Web 2.0 sites. One of the main positives is the uniting of all types of people from different walks of life, something that has become a lot more prolific with the addition of hash-tagging to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Hash-tagging is a function which allows posts to be linked together by the use of a hash-tag, either integrated within the post of following the post. These hash-tags aim to create that link between all different people from all walks of life, even to the extent of linking celebrities with non-celebrities or even sectors of society with conflicting views. Hash-tagging has been derived from the practice of tagging, where by a person can be connected with a particular post by either the creator of the post or a third party, something which I touched upon earlier. Whilst this does fulfil the initially aims of the idea behind tagging it does also throw a negative possibility. It is possible that somebody, like myself, who chooses not to post any personal information on Web 2.0 due to their profession can have inappropriate posts, including images, linked to their name by a third party, thus tarnishing the individual's reputation through no fault of their own.
In conclusion, I think that while Web 2.0 sites could be seen as something that is bringing people together and therefore fulfilling their aims they have also had a negative effect on the society that they have been accessible to. Whilst it could be argued that these negative effects could be endorsed and put in to practice by the person using the Web 2.0 site, I believe that the sites need to come with some warning in relation to these negative effects before interaction in the 'real world' is lost forever. However, it could be argued that the Web 2.0 ball is one which can't be stopped from picking up speed.
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