2009-11-03

Web 2.0 - an historically defining technology?

I was having a conversation with someone the other day about "historically defining technologies", i.e., technologies which define a period in history. The printing press and the telephone could be said to be two such "defining technologies". The conversation was about whether or not we can know at the time which technologies will be "defining" when viewed historically at some point in the future. It seems to me that Web 2.0 tools are prime candidates to be seen as "defining technologies". Web 2.0 will be seen as defining that period in history when radical changes in society were made possible by the abilitity to create, share, collaborate and publish digital information through the Internet.

So what is Web 2.0 and what are these changes?

The book/report "Change at hand: Web 2.0 for development" covers these topics. It is special issue of the series: Participatory Learning and Action that is guest-edited by Holly Ashley, Jon Corbett, Ben Garside and Giacomo Rambaldi, published in June 2009 by IIED and CTA.

It shares learning and reflections from practice and considers the ways forward for using Web 2.0 for development. A multimedia CD Rom with articles in English and French (and some in Spanish) is forthcoming later in 2009.

PART I: OVERVIEW
1. Change at hand: Web 2.0 for development
Holly Ashley, Jon Corbett, Ben Garside, Dave Jones and Giacomo Rambaldi
2. The two hands of Web2forDev: a conference summary
Chris Addison
PART II: STUDIES OF WEB 2.0 TOOLS
3. Exploring the potentials of blogging for development
Christian Kreutz
4. Web 2.0 tools to promote social networking for the Forest Connect alliance
Duncan Macqueen
5. Promoting information-sharing in Ghana using video blogging
Prince Deh
6. Mobile phones: the silver bullet to bridge the digital divide?
Roxanna Samii

PART III: ISSUE-BASED STUDIES
7. Anti social-computing: indigenous language, digital video and intellectual property
Jon Corbett and Tim Kulchyski
8. Tools for enhancing knowledge-sharing in agriculture: improving rural livelihoods in Uganda
Ednah Akiiki Karamagi and Mary Nakirya
9. Ushahidi or ‘testimony’: Web 2.0 tools for crowdsourcing crisis information
Ory Okolloh
10. Web 2.0 for Aboriginal cultural survival: a new Australian outback movement
Jon Corbett, Guy Singleton and Kado Muir

PART IV: THEORY AND REFLECTION ON PRACTICE
11. Circling the point: from ICT4D to Web 2.0 and back again
Anriette Esterhuysen
12. Web 2.0 tools for development: simple tools for smart people
Ethan Zuckerman
13. The Web2forDev story: towards a community of practice
Anja Barth and Giacomo Rambaldi
PART V: TIPS FOR TRAINERS
Web 2.0 tools: a series of short introductions
Holly Ashley, Dave Jones and Luigi Assom with Jon Corbett, Ben Garside, Christian Kreutz, Kevin Painting, Duncan Macqueen and Giacomo Rambaldi

Each introductory guide provides a brief description of the Web 2.0 tool and how it can be used for development purposes, along with links to further information and where applications can be downloaded online (more information also in e-participation):
  • Blogging
  • Micro-blogging and Twitter
  • Wikis
  • Online social networking
  • RSS feeds
  • Tagging
  • Social bookmarking
  • Glossary of Web 2.0 terms

This special issue is co-published with the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Download "Change at hand: Web 2.0 for development" (PDF 6 Mb)

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