In my family there was always an aunt who was the central information keeper for the family. If you wanted to know what the latest family news was or what the history was on any cousin aunt or uncle she would know. With her death and the loss of the original family home she lived in the family became more difficult to stay in touch with, or at least stay up to date with. When the internet came along it heralded great promise to get the family back together, at least to stay in touchwith. But soon the banality of the web took over and with email and web pages the only real ways we could interact with the web the promise waned. When one cousin starts discovering conspiracy theories and sending out email warnings you tend to ignore all the emails that cousin sends, eventually when you change email you don't tell that cousin.
Web 2.0 is changing that, slowly, which is good because we are able to acclimate to it. Now I am friends with many cousins on Face book and I can check out their pages on my schedule. If they are ranting about some conspiracy theory they are not ranting to me, I am just a spectator, as I was at my aunt's house as she might have related their latest theories. I can laugh about it and move on but I am in touch as much as I was through my aunt.
This really hit home when by accident I searched my name on videos on Google. I came up with hits for two of my cousins who had video's on You Tube. Suddenly I was not only hearing about them from my aunt, I was watching their home videos and in one case their animation shorts from their art classes. I caught up with them over a few days of screen time.
The metaphor of web 2.0 as my aunt rings true for me and it really took writing this blog to make me see it.
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