It’s the new thing: Web 2.0 koans.
Tim O’Reilly offers this “lovely” one from MySQL boss Marten Mickos:
“The ecosystem is the computer, and collaboration is its operating system.”
Paul Kedrosky reports on one from Disney chief Bob Iger:
“Technology is to media companies what refrigeration was to Coca-Cola.”
The secret is to keep them to a single sentence, have them sound portentous and ensure that they almost, but not quite, make sense. Inspired, I’ve come up with a few myself:
“Open source is the cradle, and the baby is participation.”
“The operating system is blue, and a flock of migrating geese are the APIs.”
“Attention is the moat around the castle, and the gesture is the mote in the king’s eye.”
“Syndication is the refrigerator, and Dave Winer is the beer.”
Dear blog reader, you can join in this transcendental fun. Dim the LCD, light a few candles, and contort your body into some inhuman position, preferably involving the placement of your feet behind your ears. Then think deeply, letting the metaphors and the symbols flow.
Please share your best Web 2.0 koan by putting it in a comment to this post. If we achieve a critical mass, we may attain nirvana.
Great. NY Times has been cataloging new terms entering our wired world like BlueTooth Fairy. (You should tell them about koan). Throw in Gartner’s Three Letter Acronym generator and we end up with Language 2.0. Wikipedia should finally have an advantage over Webster’s. And the French will find us even more irritating.
And on your yoga position, instead of lava lamps use the multiple screens you wrote about a few days ago.
Surprised you did not weave one around Seth.
Wrap the internet around every brain on the planet; spin the planet; software flows in the network.
…wait, that might be taken already …
Markets are consumers, communities are people
Consumers spend, people attend.
To gain attention, don’t pay your mortgage
if not nirvana then anal-cranial inversion
I humbly submit:
A patch has been issued for Web 2.0. Please upgrade your brain. Participation is mandatory.
“If you can’t tell who the sucker is in the deal, it’s you”
“Beware A-List’ers who claim to speak for The People”
“Markets Are Conversations – Where Money Talks”
“What is the sound of one VC cashing in?”
“Someone wins the lottery – but everyone else loses everything”
“Those who are the most inside pretend hardest at being outsiders”
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”
The tag that is your tag is not the only tag with which to tag a tag.
Many bloggers admire bloggers who blog about blogging.
The one who can deliver to me a changing list of changes from different sources over time without me having to change anything – is one to whom I will paypal money.
Have you heard about the fact that it’s all hype? I’m lining up sponsors for my podcast about it!
The network is the bean; user-authored content is Starbucks.
Biscotti cookies are just biscotti cookies though. Some things don’t change.
The Internet is a body in motion, and Nick Carr is its spleen.
In Soviet Russia photos tag you.
Reflections are the new drop shadows. Drop shadows are the new blink tags.
Schrodinger’s cat is dead
Crap, the blink tag around “dead” got stripped.
If we are the media, then who is our audience?
Social is to media what cocaine was to Coca Cola.
If you understand Web 2.0, you don’t know it.
every Yogi Berra expression is a candidate!
A riff on the butterfly effect:
When TechCruch flaps its wings, does a coterie of VCs create a new tornado?
If a picture is worth a thousand words and icons are pictures, why do they have a text box?
Web 2.0 is the world, and koanheads are its U.N. delegates.
The computer is the network
2.0 is the bait, VC’s are the fish
Being bought by Google is the new IPO
myspace is the soul, AJAX the body
does 2.0 have a folksonomy nature? The blogger says, no.
What is 2.0? 3 pounds of horsemanure.
Why is Silicon Valley? The money tree in the courtyard.
Upgrading the user interface for the web is a sorely needed incremental improvement. Calling it Web 2.0 is just marketing, get over it. There’s a little bottled water in every business.
Nick is to Web 2.0 as lemon juice is to milk: a spoiler, but in the positive, buttermilky sense.
Keep it up, Nick.
Matt
Equality, fairness, stupidity: pick two.
urls are the new html
microsoft is to google what mariuhuana is to heroine.
you trust in god. we trust in your attention.
Does anybody know a half year afterwards a good slogan?
web 1.0 is opium for the hopes
web 2.0 is opium for the folks