Web 2.0 and Globalisation

I’ve just been reading this excellent article on Web2.0 and globalisation. I guess I feel it is excellent for two reasons. Firstly, it’s a great primer and well structured argument. Secondly, because it reflects some of the deeper thinking, and practical applications, I’ve been applying to my considerations of folksonomies. Reflecting on some of Danah’s arguments in relation to folksonomy, I’ve realised that I also don’t want to be part of a global village. I want to be part of my village. And the boundaries for my village change, depending on where I want to live, or what “hat” (i.e. who I am) I am wearing today. When considering folksonomies for bibliographic material, it’s essential to me that I can splice my folksonomy many ways, and for this to be considered by the system depending on my “hat”. I could be in a village of one (sigh), a village of my friends or social circle, of my work colleagues, of my book club, of a geographic boundary, of a subject boundary or (indeed) as part of the global village. The creation of the folksonomy should be sensitive to these boundaries and amalgamate the tags accordingly – indeed, I may want to tag differently when in one village to another because the word’s semantics have different meanings depending on context.

I’m not sure I’m getting this across to people how I want at the moment (I get excited, they just nod). In my mind, I see wonderful complex interactions, layers of intermeshed content relevant to my context – more importantly, relevant to my goals. It could be because there are too many connections I’ve made to get me to the point I’m at. It could be that I’m saying the absolutely obvious. It may be that I tend to see things as “what meets/benefits the user goals”, over “can we do this” or “how do we do this”. I’m going to step back from this over the next month, and walk the paths again, and map the journey.

My last words will be Danahs, as she words it so much better: “The complex relationship between personal, local collectives, and global must all be modeled in glocalized networks for Web2.0 to work. We need to break out of the global village model, the universal "truth" approach to information access. We need to situate information access in glocalized culture. Folksonomy is emerging as a dance between the individual and the collective; remix occurs as individual and collective responses to the global. They are forms of organizing and situating global information in a glocalized fashion.“