The Ajax Myth
Mis-Information Week perpetuates the myth that Web 2.0 is all about AJAX. The standfirst to the article lays the groundwork, suggesting that this is purely about technologies, when surely approaches would be a better way to begin:
To bring your site into the Web 2.0 world, you need to know about Ajax, ActiveX, RSS, and other key technologies.
As the intro confirms, this brave new world of Web 2.0 is supposedly all about appearances: “you ignore the new lingo at your own peril; enterprises that put up plain-Jane Web sites today risk turning away the more discerning browsing customer.” But it’s not just about AJAX. Oh no. It’s also about littering your site with pointless bling: clever developers “spice up content and make their sites more dynamic … Use polls, surveys, RSS feeds, and tag rolls.” (OK, I’ll allow them RSS feeds as important).
Only on page four of four is there a hat-tip to the idea that the way sites work with users might have the least importance: “I also include social aspects and smaller, lightweight components as keys to Web 2.0,” says Tony Karrer, the CEO of TechEmpower.
I have to assume that the piece was either poorly commissioned or subbed rather heavily, since the author, David Strom, is actually a lot better informed than this piece suggests.
Anyway, back to the point. No, it is not about AJAX. It’s not really about languages at all. You could write an application in fridge magnets and it could still be called Web 2.0 if it meets other criteria (lightweight models, perpetual beta, read/write access, collective intelligence, etc). Yes, a rich interface is also an important part of the idea, because that enhances usability - the human angle again, see? And those rich interfaces are something that AJAX facilitates. But that’s all it is, part of the toolbox. No-one, to my mind, has put this point better than Socialtext’s Ross Mayfield:
I’d bet the future is less the Matrix than Soylent Green. Less semantic fuzz than social discovery. Less artificial intelligence than human intelligence. Less automation and more augmentation.
Soylent Green is a 1973 Charlton Heston movie. At the end, he discovers that the new miracle food from the Soylent corporation is made of dead bodies. “Soylent Green Is People!” he bellows to an unhearing crowd in the last line. The same is true of 2.0 applications and sites.