Die Web 2.0, Die.

Web 2.0 is dead and I have killed it. Right here, right now. Do not pass go, do not collect $200 million from a wussy-Valley-V.C. The beast lie slain in a digital heap of bits and bytes and asynchronous server calls. This is no phoenix - there will be no rebirth, no emergence from its own ashes. For the future to come, there must be a revolution. There must be a drastic departure - a sharp turn away from the sins of the past.

The hype, the beta, the usability errors in the guise of a “release early, release often” mantra, the rounded corners, the shiny tables, the nonsensical “Our original name was taken so we re-spelled it” domain names, the social networking site for xxxxxx, the social bookmarking xxxxxx, the video sharing xxxxxx, the it might not be quite legal but sign up anyway we care about your privacy xxxxxx, the business model? hah!, the Ajaxified, Flashified, Scriptified, Ruby-on-Railsified, Adsense-supported, made possible by your generous donations, content-lacking, MySpace ripoff (could you not find a better site to base yours on?!), start pages, tagging schmagging, long tail, pseudo-wannabe-innovation, Googlebait, oh please oh please Google buy my product please oh please I love and worship you and somehow think I have made something better than your engineers and how could you pass up buying this product that doesn’t even work but don’t blame me it’s just in beta and we couldn’t afford to do usability testing so we’re pretending to let some serial-joining geeks have some super-exclusive private access so they’ll do all the bug-testing for us and blog about it all for free and then our servers will explode because everybody on the world wide net was conned into thinking that private and exclusive meant awesome and so tried to sign up on the first day and we couldn’t do anything about it because we were busy drinking beer and watching Diggnation rather than coding and buying servers and paying attention and actually learning from the mistakes that everyone else has made a dozen hundred thousand million times.

It’s over for me. Dead. Gone. I’m done. I’m ready for a Web that actually works as advertised. A Web that lets people actually communicate with one another. A Web that lets you own what you post and read what you want to where you want to. A Web that lets you decide when you want to see an advertisement, and when you want to hear sound, and when you want to sign up, and when you want to destroy all traces of your account. A Web that departs from the metaphor of pages - that understands it is not print - that a web page is not like a newspaper page or a magazine page or a book page. A Web that is not so full of bugs and holes and 500, 501, 503, 404 errors. A Web that I can use and find value in without giving away my email address and remembering a password and whether your stupid site disallows special characters or requires numbers or is case sensitive. A Web where A-listers don’t bitch and moan about hierarchy in the publishing world in one breath and in the next uphold that same hierarchy by being stingy with links in order to protect their “authority.” A Web less intent on replacing things, and more on making things better. A Web that is non-restrictive, that doesn’t lock me in, one made by and for people, not machines. A Web that remembers when I ask it to, and forgets - really forgets - unless I tell it not to. A Web that is accessible, standards-compliant, usable, but not afraid to take risks. A Web intent on offending, alienating, polarizing, politicizing, persuading, teaching, inciting. A Web with a point to make, however contradictory. A Web with a story to tell, not just news to report. A Web where people aren’t afraid to comment or participate - where the geeks and early adopters aren’t self-righteous assholes ready to scream NOOB the minute someone asks a question. A Web of people and ideas and art and culture and poetry and connection and love and desire and experimentation and guessing and trial-and-error rather than corporations and greed and money and Truth and property. A Web kinda sorta maybe a little bit more like this. A Web less like a cloud and more like the rays of the sun. A Web that feels more friendly because it’s made up of my friends. A Web I can believe in. A Web I can trust. A Web that is fun. A Web in which it’s okay - even awesome - that Everything is Miscellaneous, because it is, and it should be, and it’s better that way.

It’s coming - I can tell. Something insanely awesome is just now peeking over the horizon. I can’t wait.

Die, Web 2.0, die.