You know the big danger of being an ‘expert’ is losing track of the ‘Why should we’, and focusing only on ‘What can we’. I think for a lot of people Web 2.0 might fall into this category .. We think social networking is important, so is user generated content, mashups of all of this, etc.. Its the hype, so why not jump on the train and go along for the ride.

Talking with some people today i think i got a new insight for my self for what Web 2.0 means to me personally, to tell this story we have to go back to the steam engines that were starting to be developed in the 1700’s and lead to the steam locomotive in the 1800’s, and started the industrial revolution.

As this industrial revolution swept around the world, society changed a lot and so did the way that people interacted. Before people talked, sang songs at home, went to social gatherings in pub’s and bar’s, or spend the afternoon chatting and gossiping. With the industrial revolution large scale entertainment came into existence, so did the big media companies who now control much of what entertainment we consume; and the old way of doing things was lost, we became focused on what other people produced for us, instead of producing our own entertainment, and being entertainment for our friends, family and fellow townsmen. With it in essence we lost our ability to be creative, to express our selves, we became the generations of the ‘consumers’ instead of being both consumers as well as producers of all this ‘content’.

I think the internet, and by extend what we now call “Web 2.0″, “social network” and “user generated content”, is our way to take back what we lost for almost 200 years, and do a very old thing, satisfy a very old need to be a producer and not just a consumer, in a very new way.

So we can be the entertainment for our friends and family again, and for our ‘townspeople’, though we would now call this “the global internet village”, as was already the dream back in 1995. It’s the time where we become empowered again, and gain back our ability to express our selves creativly and be producers or of our own life one youtube movie or myspace page or flickr foto album at a time.

Now that’s why I’m so passionate about Web 2.0 technologies, what drives me to want to invent, innovate and make things possible .. what’s yours?