Well I've finally found some time to sit down and write here. I've been thinking lately about the layers of information production that occur in Web 2.0 applications. The many media and applications that would fit into this very broad category tend to revolve around a few central principles of interaction, but the central one seems to be one of sharing or generosity. What does this really mean, this 'generosity'? 'Generosity' in Web 2.0 is the equivalent of self-classification.

When we create media on YouTube, write a blog entry, and especially when we update social networking profiles, we are placing ourselves in a series of categories. We cross-reference ourselves according to these terms/tags/links within the grand Web 2.0 database, even the archive on the whole. This happens with such frequency (just think how much you do on the Web each day that is recorded - just about everything) and at such a fast pace that the sheer volume of data that is collected hourly is incomprehensible. This data is stored, occasionally erased, altered, and sold. Yet, more importantly, it creates a network around both the individuals who leave these data behind them, as well as the media that collect it. It's this data network that creates value for the users of these participatory media on the individual and the collective levels.

I'm interested in what happens to these data networks. Surely many are lost, but there is so much replication of data occurring that when one piece is lost, it is not unlikely that one could find it again. Over time, these data accumulate like dust or sediment, records of our past interactions, of our projected identities. This comes to such a point that we are left with a kind of network archaeology, in the same way Foucualt uses the term in The Archaeology of Knowledge, but also in the literal sense of the word.

This sense of permanence conflicts with the ideals of 'cyberspace' (as a term for a dying epoch), the ideals of emphemeral interaction, unbounded data flowing freely from person to person. We now have to recognize that what we do in these environments leaves a path. Some of this path might blow away in the wind over time, but much of it will be buried, only to be found by some adventurous digger.