Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
Web 2.0, the social
web (or whatever you
prefer to call it) is real!
“I suddenly notice a strange object, with a screen and a keyboard,
connected - marvel of marvels - by a high-speed line. I know that the
moment I press a button on that machine, the world will come to me.”
—Paolo Coelho, writer and poet
A great elderly Japanese Zen master (let's call him Makoto) owned a cat that
was the love of his life and was by his side always, including during meditation
classes. When the Zen master died, his disciples decided to keep the cat because
they were so used to it. When the cat died, the current master and the monks
agreed to buy another cat because they were so used to having a cat in the tem-
ple. Other monasteries found this intriguing and concluded that the greatness
of Makoto's monastery came from some mysterious powers or effects from the
cat. And so monasteries all over the region began introducing cats in their med-
itation classes. This practice went on for generations and even led to the publi-
cation of theses and treatises on the importance of the cat in increasing human
concentration and eliminating negative energy. It took one century and a master
who was allergic to cat hair for the first temple to refuse a cat in the monastery.
When nothing happened to the master and the monastery apart from continuous
progress in their meditations, other monasteries also began withdrawing cats -
in the process saving money from feeding so many cats! Within a few decades,
new theses and treatises appeared highlighting the power of the human mind
and the importance of meditation without the aid of animals. Within a century,
the cat vanished entirely from the Zen meditation in that region. But it took two
hundred years for this behavioral circle to run its course.
After reading this story in Paolo Coelho's Like The Flowing River I couldn't
help but draw an analogy to the phenomenon of the social web, or “web 2.0”
as it is famously called. The similarity lies in the fact that sometimes human
behavior has no logic or meaningful explanation, particularly in a case of a lack
of direct pre-reference, as we currently see on the social web. Although there
 
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