Where Web 2.0 Went Wrong

While reading Where Web 2.0 Went Wrong Part 3 caught my eye on two topics.

The first topic is about the term “gift economy”. The gift economy emphasis on the social motives, while commodity culture is an economic motive. Our country operates social order that involves the giving and accepting gifts and favors. “Within commodity culture sharing content may be viewed as economically damaging; in the informal gift economy, by contrast, the failure to share material is socially damaging.” A gift economy is where valuables are not exchanged or traded, but rather given with a payment or trade made in return. A commodity has “value,” while a gift has “worth”. This made me think about debt. Today the United States is in an extreme number of debt. Most of this debt is towards China. Yes, we slowly pay this back but there is no way that we will fully pay this back when we continue to make it bigger each minute. Since China is for the most part an alliance with the United States we can continue to have this debt.

My second topic that I would like to focus on is the section “Nothing Is Ever Free”. Years ago multiple companies used to be free and television shows could be streamed with a click of the button and no purchase made. Things changed over the years due to the number of view and watches of things. Since the audience became interested in these companies thing then changed to having to be purchased instead of for free.  I wish everything was still free it just shows that companies know what we like.