Friday, 23 May 2008

Bertolt Brecht invented Web 2.0 ?

Vannevar Bush is often quoted as devising concept of the WorldWide Web some 50 years before the Web actually came to be built.

But what about "Web 2.0"? Well - it seems that the concept was laid out by none other than Bertolt Brecht even earlier - in 1926. (Or 1932?)

“Radio is one-sided when it should be two. It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him.”

(I picked this quote up from "Words Flew Right Around the World" on Chumbawamba's latest album.)