Cave 2.0

By Ian, on June 27th, 2006

Marc Fawzi makes an interesting point about web 2.0 society

Fact: trusted individuals are once again the source of news in a society (bloggers) Fact: word of mouth is once again how news spreads (viral marketing) Fact: people once again hunt and gather in a group (del.icio.us) Fact: people once again group things using words like small, big, happy, sad, funny, food rather than detailed hierarchical structures (tags) Fact: impulsive production (minimal upfront planning vs. a lot of upfront planning) is back in style (Google “betas”) Fact: once again, sharing between people does not conform to a strict concept of economic reciprocity but rather to the concept that what is good for all is good for one (YouTube, del.icio.us, etc.) These are all traits of a hunter-gatherer society, i.e. a pre-agricultural society. Tens of thousands of years of behavioral evolution wiped out in just a few years.