Web 2.5: The Symbiotic Web

Abstract

A new form of symbiosis is developing on the Web. The current ecommerce model, which relies heavily on the supply of ‘free’ content, has made individuals and commercial enterprises mutually dependent: enterprises have built business models reliant on a currency of personal data, while individuals expect free access to services supplied by search engines, email systems and social networking sites, and media services such as YouTube and Hulu. These ‘free’ services use personal data to generate revenues through targeted advertising, profile building, and the direct brokering of personal data. The symbiosis is essentially benign – it lies behind many recent positive developments. Both users and the businesses that provide online services benefit. Nevertheless, there are significant risks associated with this symbiotic nature that need to be addressed. This paper will describe the model that is the Symbiotic Web, explain the risks associated with it, and suggest possible approaches to address them.

Keywords:

• autonomy
• personal data
• Internet
• Web 2.5

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on research for my doctorate funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Notes

Not all Web 2.0 sites rely upon user-generated content. Sites such as Hulu supply commercially produced content but still rely on what can be called Web 2.5 data gathering techniques.

In his interview on http://www.videojug.com/interview/stephen-fry-web-20#can-you-define-it (last accessed 18 January 2010).

See for example http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/04/google_how_big_is_too_big.html (last accessed 18 January 2010).

See T. Berners-Lee and M. Fischetti, Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by its Inventor, 1st paperback edn (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), particularly 169–170.

D. van den Poel and W. Buckinx, ‘Predicting Online-Purchasing Behaviour’, European Journal of Operational Research 166, no. 2 (2005): 557.

Discussed in I. Ayres, Super Crunchers: How Anything Can Be Predicted (London: John Murray, 2007).

For a summary of the reasons for the changes to the system from Facebook's perspective, see http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7584397130 (last accessed 18 January 2010).

See http://www.phorm.com/ (last accessed 18 January 2010) and see http://www.fipr.org/080423phormlegal.pdf (last accessed 18 January 2010) for the Foundation for Information Policy Research's legal analysis of the Phorm ‘Webwise’ system.

See for example http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8135850.stm (last accessed 18 January 2010).

See Ayres, note 6, 33–34. As Ayres puts it, ‘… because of Super Crunching, firms sometimes may be able to make more accurate predictions about how you'll behave than you could ever make yourself.’

See C.R. Sunstein, Republic.com 2.0 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).

Perhaps his strongest critic is Eugene Volokh, of the Volokh Conspiracy blog (http://www.volokh.com/), but there has also been criticism in print, e.g. D. Hunter, ‘Philippic.com’, California Law Review 90 (2001): 70.

From Peter Steiner's cartoon in the New Yorker, published in 1993.

See Directive 95/46/EC, particularly Articles 6 and 7.

Most notably in D. Brin, The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1998).