It seems that many major organizations are beginning to respond to Web 2.0 in terms of how they operate on a day to day basis.
My impression is that rather than Web 2.0 driving these changes it goes something like this:
- Web 2.0 makes new interactions and relationships possible
- Individuals and groups explore and use these and begin to think and act differently
- This seeps into organisations with which these people are involved
- Small parts of these organisations begin to try things with Web 2.0
- Some of these work quickly, easily and cheaply - creating a competitive advantage
- These are adopted more extensively along with changed rules resulting in a cultural shift and creating a comparative advantage
The overall direction of the shift is
- from understanding 'the system' as a classic input-process-output entity
- towards understanding the system' as a network of agents (people, tools, ideas,...) that interact with some coherence, that is, as a complex adaptive systems.
The phenomenon seems to be akin to Naisbit's notions of Hi-Tech Hi-Touch. This beginning to emerge in schools and may flow onto to education, per se, soon.
