The Web is Flat
Sander Spek
elektropost@sander-s.net
Infonomics & New Media
European Centre for Digital Communication
(INM-EC/DC), Zuyd University

The World is Flat
A brief history of the twenty-first century
Thomas L. Friedman
(2005, 2006, 2007)

Book titles (and sales)
The World is Flat
The End of Poverty
In Defense of Globalization
Globalization and it's Discontents

Book titles (and sales)
The World is Flat 1
The End of Poverty 515
In Defense of Globalization 20,602
Globalization and it's Discontents 52,196
(On Amazon.com selling lists,
according to Leamer, 2006)

Lecture overview
A flat world.
The flat web, meaning:
Open source. Web2.0 and
user-generated content.
Source-generated content.
Open content. Embedded
Publishing.

Q:
So, what does ‘flat’ mean?

Q:
So, what does ‘flat’ mean?
A:
Euhm... ‘change’,
sort of.

Changes…
Berlin Wall Offshoring
Netscape Supply chaining
Workflow software Insourcing
Open sourcing In-forming
Outsourcing The Steroids

…and convergence
… of flatteners
… of horizontal value chains
… of the world (geographically)

From world to web

Open source
development methodology
access to a product’s source

Free as in ‘freedom’,
not as in ‘free beer’.

Although…

Or how about a free car?
www.theoscarproject.org

Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in
the computer industry caused by the
move to the internet as platform, and
an attempt to understand the rules
for success on that new platform.
Tim O'Reilly (2006)

Web 2.0 patterns
(O'Reilly, 2005)

Web 2.0 patterns
(O'Reilly, 2005)

Web 2.0 patterns
(O'Reilly, 2005)
Data is the
Next Intel Inside

Web 2.0 patterns
(O'Reilly, 2005)
Users Add Value

Web 2.0 patterns
(O'Reilly, 2005)
Network Effects
by Default

Web 2.0 patterns
(O'Reilly, 2005)
Some Rights Reserved

Web 2.0 patterns
(O'Reilly, 2005)
The Perpetual

Web 2.0 patterns
(O'Reilly, 2005)
Cooperate, don't control!

Web 2.0 patterns
(O'Reilly, 2005)
Software above
the level of a
single device

User-
generated
content

Bradley Horowitz:

User-generated content
Tags. del.icio.us, Flickr, last.fm
Weblogs. LiveJournal. MySpace, web-log.nl
Media. MySpace, DeviantArt, Flickr, YouTube.
Wikis. Wikipedia, last.fm, WikiMaas.
Social Networking. Facebook, MySpace, Hyves,
LinkedIn.
Etcetera.

The Wisdom of Crowds
‘‘Given enough eyeballs,
all bugs are shallow’’

Wikipedia’s track record
English (Oct 2006)
> 1.4 Million English articles
> 800.000 new articles a day
Dutch
> 400.000 Dutch articles (last week)
Studies by a.o. c’t Magazine and Nature

Community success
1. Individual value
2. Collective value
3. General value

So, is this all great?

NO!

[I am] actually convinced that people will
eventually have had enough of the
nonsense, and they will want to pay for
good quality. At a certain point nobody
wants to watching shitting dogs on
YouTube anymore. It may be free, it
remains a waste of time.
Andrew Keen

Copyright
Copyleft
Public Domain

Copyleft
Takes the best of both worlds.
Using copyright laws, to free
works of certain rights.
e.g.,
GFDL, Creative Commons

GFDL
General Public License
(GNU-GPL) for software.
Free Documentation License
(GNU-FDL) for documentation.
In short:
attribution and viral.

Creative Commons
BY – attribution
SA – share alike (viral)
NC – non-commercial
ND – no derivatives

Consequences (1)
More legal use of works.
More works to use for
consumers.
Remove barriers
for knowledge sharing.

Consequences (2)
One laptop per child
(OLPC)
a.k.a. $100 laptop
Free software
Free knowledge

Lawrence Lessig

Changes for
newspaper media

Embedded
publishing?

UGC SGC

Journalistic sources start publishing.
Competition for traditional media?
Or complementary?

Examples
PSV
UNIZO
Tiberghien
First Monday
Herman Van Rompuy

Consequences for
traditional media?

Conclusions
.........

Literature

The Flat World
The works of James Surowiecki (2005)
Marshall McLuhan The Wisdom of Crowds
The works of Yochai Benkler (2006)
Manuel Castells The Wealth of Networks
Thomas Friedmann (2005) Henry Jenkins (2006)
The World Is Flat Convergence Culture

The Flat Web
Chris Anderson (2006) Andrew Keen (2007)
The Long Tail The Cult of the Amateur
(or the Wired article
from 2004)
Clay Shirky (2008)
Here Comes Everybody
Don Tapscott and
Anthony Williams (2006)
Wikinomics

Embedded
Free Culture Publishing
Stuff by Lawrence Lessig Our upcoming report
(e.g. on YouTube)
www.fleet-project.be
www.fleet-research.be

Comics courtesy of
Gaping Void XKCD
(Hugh McLeod) (Randall Munroe)
www.gapingvoid.com www.xkcd.com
Toothpaste For Dinner Married To The Sea
(Drew) (Drew and Nathalie Dee)
www.toothpastefordinner.com www.marriedtothesea.com