The Web 2.0 Conference this week has engendered a huge spike in posts attempting to define Web 2.0. They range from the brief to the preposterously long. So, here's my sound bite, since I am trying to remain reasonably brief, and also because I believe that an operational definition of anything has to small enough to scribble on one page of college-ruled note paper, even if the thing itself is bigger than a breadbox:

Web 2.0 is the term that we are coming to use to represent the convergence of technology and thought around an emerging paradigm for computing and social interaction. The driver of this paradigm shift is Mazlowian: we have achieved a certain level on the hierarchy of computing and social needs, and now are redefining a new set of goals that are driving us forward. In essence, we have established a computing and social architecture based on information needs -- moving bits around efficiently, and supporting various sorts of communication based on the the social dynamics of the 90s. Meanwhile, we have actually moved onto this platform -- we are living there, denizens of the Web 1.X -- and that shift has had profound consequences: not the least of which is, having made that move, we find the platform, and the thinking that devised it, inadequate for our new needs.

In particular, there is now an abundance of information and communication channels. But we are not searching for better bandwidth, or more streamlined business processes: what we are after is meaning. We are dreaming up a shell of social gestures surrounding and repurposing Web 1.X information, and inventing a new generation of software to capture, render, and remix it. This is how we plan to make sense of the world: not through number crunching, or being told by established organizations, but through the connected conversations of people.

The explosion in new technologies and forms -- tags, RSS, Ajax and so on -- is another effort in democratizing this process, putting more control of our Web experience in the hands of dreamers and fringe innovators, and taking it out of the hands of those with the most investment in existing Web 1.X models.

Like other revolutions, this is both an attempt at changing the place of the individual in social context, and a redefinition of that context itself. This means it is at the same time an intensely personal and societal shift: a bottom-up rethinking of self-identity and a simultaneous, wholesale power shift in technology, media, entertainment, and ultimately, politics. Everything, really.

We will continue to struggle with the specification of what this Web 2.0 thing is, because, even as we are struggling to explain it, the very meaning of the words is changing, the scope of the discussion is spreading, and the stakes are increasing.