Is the Web 2.0 Bubble about to Burst?

After reading your remarks concerning the impending bubble burst of the Web 2.0 Internet sector, I was immediately reminded why people in my profession, sociology, are critical of economists: You have a tenacity to conduct vulgar forms of reductionism that render the phenomenal field your are investigating absent of the preponderance of social dynamics that influence the trajectories and outcomes of these forms of human interaction, so that the considerations for which you do account are compliant within the narrow framework of presuppositions that structure economic research. There are far more motivations for individuals and collectivities to continue to propagate on the Internet instantiations of Web 2.0 than merely the incentive of wealth. Speaking for myself, I contribute to the establishment of platforms that engender collaborative social knowledge building because it reflects an interest of mine – not geared toward maximizing profits – but oriented toward the promotion of public spheres that embody the attributes that I evaluate oftentimes over my personal fortune; namely, social democracy. Consequently, to reduce your analysis to the narrowly extended scope of economic variables that enamor the rigid minds of economists, limits your ability to foresee other possible outcomes that are generated by conditions excluded from your analysis.

To make my point, I wonder what your prediction would have been for the early open-sourcing projects that arose in opposition to the corporatization and privatization of knowledge associated with computer science and computer programming? GNU, in all likelihood, would have suffered from the same negative forecasts from people who possess a similar business-minded closed worldview. However, economic variables did not eliminate open-sourcing, rather open-sourcing dramatically changed the landscape of the programming industry, creating a robust alternative to IBM and Microsoft, which continues to increase in market share. In short, economics were not the determinant of the path followed by open-sourcing; economics were the consequent, as many open-sourcing projects matured to the point that they were in a position to offer alternative services to businesses, through their ability to tailor their code to the particular needs of a consumer while remaining open-sourced, which added a layer of security for investors since they could correct faults in the programming. As far as Business 2.0 goes, we will have to wait and see. However, I suspect that it will soon be bombarded with competition emanating from the open-source community that is forming around Web 2.0.

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