The Artistic Outlaw

There’s a new way to create and market web-sites and no one told me about it. I didn’t get my invitation to the private beta release party. No one told me that we would be taking old methods and technologies, placing new names on them or groups of them and touting them as brand new. Someone failed to mention that certain design elements were now part of this new and improved web. I suppose the memo never reached my desk.

I’m already tired of Web 2.0, not because of its absolute and powerful inundation into every nook and cranny on the web. Not because some of its components infuriate me as a accessibility supporter. Not even because it’s another trend or catch-phrase or buzz-word.

I’m tired of Web 2.0 because it’s all old. It’s all been done; it’s all been around for years, none of it’s new. No real advances, in fact some of it feels like a step backwards.

Ajax? This is just JavaScript and xml working together, not new; only the word Ajax is new. Seemingly overnight, you’re not a decent web or software developer if your web-app doesn’t include a massive amount of sloppy Ajax features.

There’s a ton of arguments for and against Ajax, I’m not going to rehash those. My main issue with it, is that it’s sloppy, it’s not standardized, its functions are often easier or more efficiently accomplished using another proven “old-school” method.

In almost every case Ajax is used to apply an “ooh cool” factor to a product or project. This is the absolute wrong reason to use Ajax. We’re not making desktop applications, we’re making web applications, and with that comes an unstable, non-standardized environment and absolute, constant and relative variables. The web should not work like a desktop app.

How about companies with numerals in their name, is this new, I don’t think so. As a matter of fact 1lotus.com was around before Web 2.0 was a glimmer in a marketing person’s eye. What about 2advanced, shiver7 anyone. The point; It’s yet another old trend being related with the new package.

Rounded corners, mailing lists, invites, glossy, big graphics? These are all old and now renewed; they all fall under the moniker Web 2.0. Why?

Why do we need to label the internet, why are we pushing an idea of renewed technologies in shiny wrappers, are we running out of actual new ideas?

I have an idea, let’s stop labeling things and stop being cliquish as a global community, let’s band together and let’s find a way out of Web 2.0 back into the real internet, where things are what they are, and not something they’re not. Which is new.