Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

why everybody like so much the video “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us” on youtube???
I’ve received several emails and messages from friends and colleagues lately, pointing me to this resource. Puntoiformatico is talking about this video as the ultimate explanation of what web 2.0 is.

In the beginning I was skeptical about this video, but after the second time I saw it i started to appreciate it. Here is why I like it: the video is 4:31 minutes long, the first 1:20 minutes are spent to tell us what a link is and that HTML is a markup language. Thanks, good introduction. What’s so amazing in the next three minutes?

• here it comes XML, and tha fact that form and content should be separated. Even if this is no news, considered that HTML is a semantic language, it has just been misused in the past. Now things are changing.
• then comes blogger. Blogger brought the Web to its roots. In the beginning everybody on the net was contributing, because everybody using the net knew a little HTML. Then the medium spread and we all needed something that took people back in control. This something are blogs (blogger platform in the video). Good point.
• then of course the video shows flickr and youtube and del.icio.us, a must when you talk about web 2.0
• then comes the final part about content creation, participative creation, i.e. wikipedia
• eventually, as in any good presentation, there’s a kinda “what to do next”: rethinking the way we are used to think about the Web. About identities. About authorship…

Definitely not bad for a 4 minutes long video, don’t you think?