The Web 2.0 article by Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine definitely had aspects that resonated me. And I think with me it accomplished its’ goal, which was to make me more interested in digital storytelling. The got this sense from this article (and from everyone who has spoken to us in class) that digital storytelling is something that is real, and isn’t something that is going away any time. A lot of people aren’t willing to have open dialogues about this sort of technology because of the taboo that being online is nerdy, and anti social. Personally, I am worried about people losing their social abilities if they hide their opinions behind a computer screen their entire lives. But there are also so many overwhelming positives that can come through with this technology that it is starting to trump my fear.
The first quote that I really liked from the article was “attention is focused on the content.” The quote is referring to the fact that with everything becoming so simple and intuitive, technology isn’t holding us back, because we aren’t spending hours learning the technology before we are using it. You can decide that you want to make your own blog, and 10 minutes later after simply typing into Google “how to make my own blog”, you can make that happen. The idea that the learning curve is becoming smaller and smaller makes digital storytelling more open for anyone to use and have fun with.
The article refers you to a website called wefeelfine.org and if you clicked on it you saw that it brings you to a big screen with balls flying around everywhere that you can click on. Once you click on one of the balls it brings up a quote that was found in someone’s blog about how they are feeling. I will admit it was insanely addictive, and I spent 30 minutes reading little quotes about how people were feeling. My first thought was how incredibly cool this was, it was something simple and easy to use, but also very informative and interesting. I would have never found that without the internet, and without this new technology it would have never been possible to do something like that.
I wish that the article went a little deeper into the other side of the story, and talk a little more about how web 2.0 still has a long way to go, because it is obviously not even close to being perfect yet. But the feeling I got out of the article, what I will take away, is that no matter how you feel about this web 2.0 you HAVE TO at least give it a try.