We've Missed the Boat on Web 1.0 - long live Web 2.0!

I think we've missed the boat on web 1.0. It slipped away.

All this talk of web 1.0 or web 2.0 can be ignored or passed off as techno-hype; just so much jargon to satisfy the impulses of creative web-o-philes; an empty marketing trope that attempts to authenticate a transition-less transition. But then again, maybe we need to get out more? If Google is anything to go by, web 2.0's score of 290,000 hits is a pretty impressive testimony of this concept's stickiness. Of course it begs the question, 'what was web 1.0?' And this is my point. If the web had a pre-history, then the neolithic, mesolithic and iron age of the web were the late nineties and early noughties, when static pages and web applications ruled the earth. Roarrr! The fossils of this period of web pre-history still survive though, intact in cloistered mindsets that are racing to catch up with a revolution that has passed (read, for instance, our recent statement "the web is, above all, a “shop window” and front door..."). We've missed the boat on web 1.0 - it's too late to grasp the affordances of these static pages, despite our trying. Thankfully, though, it is not too late to ride the wave of web 2.0: and this is the opportunity facing us. Any takers?