What is 2.0? What does it mean to be 2.0?

Let us immediately enter a paradox, taking inspiration from the very 2.0 phenomenon in order to explain it better. A few days ago someone searched online for the following text “what does it mean to be 2.0”; the search engine used proposed, among the countless alternatives, one of our articles, probably because some of the searched terms were present in the tags (the most significant words). The user in question selected our article, the BLOG tracked this operation and we, once we entered the statistics section, noticed what had happened.

We do not know this person but, very quickly, we became aware of one of their specific curiosities or needs; for a moment, perhaps only for a moment, we connected.
Being 2.0 means being in the 21st century, being connected; not by chance this millennium begins with “20”, a great step forward compared with the previous “19”. This step, this great difference, is not perceived every day, nor does it assert itself through “structural”, “immediate” changes such as a different social redistribution of wealth or work, or through new models of knowledge. The 2.0 present in our “world” indicates the presence of new communication systems, global and fast, personal and reciprocal, in very close relationship with one another.
The 2.0 World is a direct consequence of the limits inherent in the real world.

Google‘s single search field is an evident response to bureaucracy, present everywhere, which forces us to fill in, detail, document and report, often without offering any added value.

Social networks and instant messengers (such as WhatsApp) are simple tools open to everyone, willing to accept every contribution; they are the response to the media of the previous century, radio and television, monocratic, completely passive tools. They represent the alternative, the possibility of communicating, of sharing emotions without leaving home, without the obligation to face a society that is increasingly less safe, welcoming and friendly.

Smartworking is a new way of working, of interacting, through meeting platforms, chats, interactive tools, always online. Here too, always from home, in a sort of virtual isolation.

Artificial intelligence-based services talk with us every day, propose information and visual content of every kind, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between artificial and real.

The “new world”, an expression of this first part of the twenty-first century, of that 2000 which, being only at its beginning, is for now “only” 2.0, is connected, fast, simple, participatory and extremely unreflective.

The new protagonists, all or almost all of them, were simply tired of the previous model, tired of being only diligent spectators.

The network is a sounding board for everything that represents us in an intangible way: our thoughts, our attention, our forms of expression, our collective voice, our emotions.

We are progressively moving from the real world, suffocated by tangible and selective elements, toward a new and more complex virtual world, open to everyone (or almost everyone).

A flight from reality toward a world of easy thoughts, incorporeal, sometimes even crude and untrue, often excessive, but always capable of providing new possibilities for socialization, relationships and social participation.

New global banalities replace rigid, exclusive and inscrutable centers of knowledge and perhaps of power. New ethereal (often temporary) friendships become synthetic antagonists of holding hands.

New digital professions and new ways of being popular and influencers overturn social balances, roles and status.

It is no coincidence that those born in this century, whose date of birth begins with 2 and 0, are best able to grasp the spirit and virtual dynamics of this new stage, precisely because they are free from the previous baroque infrastructures, often an expression of “1.9” society, modern and postmodern.

Being 2.0, or two point zero as you prefer to call it, means living in the third millennium, it means having no patience, it means living while using the Internet every day, compulsively, many times a day; it means clicking, posting, tweeting, viewing, feeding, tagging, browsing, selecting, searching, commenting, …

The society of “too much” is giving way to the society of “right now”; this is an enormous change, not a “step forward” but a “great step” in a different and alternative direction, whose infinite peculiarities will be progressively analyzed in this blog.

Of one thing we are certain, and we repeat it in almost every “2.0” article: we are only at the beginning.

Mondoduepuntozero