Web 3.0: utilizadores de todo o mundo, uni-vos!

E o vapourware que aproveita o bandwagon da Web 3.0 já começou… Fiquei a saber do NUWeb, um projecto de uma universidade da Formosa (Taiwan), através de uma mensagem que Geert Lovink enviou para a lista de correio electrónico nettime. A iniciativa pretende criar uma “Web para o utilizador, pelo utilizador e do utilizador”. Tentei assinar a newsletter mas dá-me uma mensagem de erro qualquer num idioma estranho… Yep, as suspeitas parecem confirmar-se. Mas para além de o assunto da mensagem ser bastante actual, o professor Sun Wu, responsável pelo projecto, aborda algumas questões relacionadas com os sites de conteúdo gerado pelo utilizador que consistem na base da Web 2.0 que permanecem muitas vezes ignoradas por debaixo da euforia histérica do hype: Flickr, MySpace e YouTube apenas oferecem os seus serviços de borla porque ganham milhões com isso, exigindo dos seus clientes contrapartidas que os colocam sob a sua dependência.

Estes novos agregadores poderão ser tão ou mais perigosos que os anteriores, uma vez que a sua estratégia aposta muito mais na sedução e atracção, assim como na captação da atenção, do que numa disciplina ostensivamente agressiva capaz de gerar revolta e protesto activo. É o Admirável Mundo Novo de volta. O domínio que eles alcançaram sobre a Web permite-lhes impor termos draconianos de utilização aos seus utilizadores – “ao assinares isto, estás-nos a dar o controlo absoluto sobre as tuas músicas e vídeos” – e recolher uma quantidade infindável de dados que são extremamente úteis para as empresas de publicidade atingirem com mais eficácia os seus alvos. Para além disso, as capacidades de partilha de conteúdos – afinal de contas, o principal argumento da retórica empregue para propangandear estas “redes” – são bastante exíguas, quer em termos de limites de espaço como do tipo de material que se pode disponibilizar, pois há sempre a possibilidade de a música e o vídeo que nós transferimos serem eliminados por questões de “propriedade intelectual”…

Voltando ao NUWeb, no leque de promessas que o professor Karamba Wu apresenta para alterar este estado de controlo ubíquo subliminar há um detalhe, no entanto, que me parece particularmente suspeito. Mediante a transformação do computador pessoal de cada utilizador num servidor Web, o projecto propõe-se oferecer aos utilizadores a possibilidade de partilharem o que quiserem, a quem quiserem e independentemente de quaisquer limites. Isto parece-me uma visão demasiado idílica do esquema, pois o senhor não especifica quais as características específicas dessa arquitectura descentralizalizada. A única solução viável que consigo discernir de momento passa pela implementação de uma rede P2P apoiada num protocolo semelhante ao BitTorrent. O que é certo é que qualquer intenção de devolver a Web aos utilizadores não passa de conversa fiada se houver sempre a possibilidade de os agentes da dinossáurica indústria cultural obstruírem o processo. Antes que me alongue mais, aqui vai a mensagem:

NUWeb: A project for Web 3.0: for the user, by the user, of the user!

Taiwan’s National ChungCheng University announced, in a press
conference held in Taipei on December 27, a Web 3.0 project with a goal
to build a new Web that is for the user, by the user, and of the user.
Prof. Sun Wu, the leader of the project, said, “In Web 1.0, contents of
the Web were provided by Content Service Providers (CSP) such as news
companies or general institutes who set up websites to provide the
information service, while the users are purely information consumers.
In Web 2.0, many web service providers, such as Myspace, blogger,
Youtube, Flickr, digg, Wikipedia, etc., set up websites that allow the
users to participate in community sharing and collaboration, so the
users are no longer purely information consumers, they are also the
content providers. In a sociological sense, Web 2.0 is an era that the
Web is for the user and also by the user.”

“However”, Professor Wu continued, “The Web 2.0 era still have some
serious problems that makes it far from being an ideal Web era, so
there is a need for the Web to move on to its next stage.”

“Although the Web was once dreamed to be a Utopia, the cruel fact is
that the Web is now basically in the hands the commercial power. More
extremely, the Web is now dominated by the super empires: Google,
Yahoo!, and Microsoft, which control over 80% of the Web power. Most
Net users are basically living on the free services provided by the
super empires in the Web, yet ironically, such services are for the
purpose of making money. The dominance problem causes two other serious
problems, the autonomy and the privacy problems. As the Net users rely
more and more on these super portals, their personal data and privacy
are at stake, being potentially utilized for monetization, or even
worse, being leaked out to criminal groups. As the service platform is
owned by the service providers, the users do not have autonomy. They
have to agree to an unfair TOS (terms of service) before they are
entitled to receive the service. When YouTube was sold for 1.6 billion
US dollars, its users have no say and no share at all even though the
value of YouTube was created by tens of millions of “You” in this
Tube.”

“Info-sharing which is the most attractive feature of the Web is still
limited and sometimes inconvenient in the Web 2.0 era. For example, the
Net users very often have to take a lot of effort to upload pictures or
other stuff to the web service sites, which could be time consuming or
cumbersome. As the servers have space limitation, the sharing is
limited by size too. Such tedious processes and the size limitations
sometimes would discourage the information sharing at all. For example,
for a group of friends who join a trip together and return with giga
bytes of pictures and videos, it will be a headache as to how to share
those multimedia files”

“All the above-mentioned problems, the dominance, autonomy, privacy,
and limitation of sharing, all come from a common cause: the fact that
the Net users do not have a powerful web server of their own and do not
have their own Web”, observed Professor Sun Wu.

Because website is the main platform for information sharing as well as
other Web activities, owning no website means having no power and no
property in the Cyberspace. That is the root of the problems.

“Our solution is the NUWeb project”, said Prof. Wu with a smile.
“NUWeb, which stands for Net User’s Web, is a new Web system for the
Net users. It is a project to pursue the Web 3.0 idealism. It will
empower the Net users by providing a software that will turn the user’s
PC into a high power Web service site through which the users can
conduct information sharing, community service, blog publishing, etc.,
in a much more efficient and convenient way, with virtually no size
limitation and with full autonomy of their own.”

“In our opinion, Web 3.0 is a social revolution in the Cyberspace to
pursue democracy; a Web that is for the user, by the user, and of the
user.”

“Technically speaking, NUWeb is a user-centric software. It is a
decentralized portal and information system aiming at providing a more
efficient and effective information sharing, community service, and
information management.”

“NUWeb is composed of three main subsystems: NUWeb PP: A personal
information and service platform for the users to set up their own
portal right on their PCs. NUWeb CP: A community portal system, and
NUWeb.cc, the community center of the NUWeb Cyberspace.”, “With NUWeb,
the users can set up their own websites in a few minutes easily without
the need to apply for URL and without the need of knowledge for website
administration.”

“As the web server is resident in the user’s own PC, the users have
full control of the sharing regarding what to share and who to share,
without the file size limitation. The users not only have a higher
flexibility and capacity in the sharing, but also have a platform for
managing the sharing with a full access control mechanism”.

“On the other hand, the portal nuweb.cc will be a federation of the
regional portals and the personal portals”. Like YouTube, Flickr, et.
al., it will allow the users to participate and share their content.
However, the Web 3.0 community portal makes a big difference in that
there will be virtually no size limitation and that the community will
be owned and governed by all the users.”

“It will be a long way to go to really fulfill the idealism of Web
3.0″, commented Prof. Wu, “To successfully return the Web to the Net
users, we need user’s power!”, “Only after the users are sufficiently
empowered, and only when the user’s power are unified together, can we
successfully break the unjustified dominance in the Web and return the
Web to all the Net users.”

“NUWeb is a project for public interest and the source code will be
open when the software is released”, concluded Prof. Wu, “We wish that
there will be more teams to participate in this Web revolution and we
wish to seek supports and collaborations from all sectors, such as the
government, universities, non-profit organizations, etc., around the
world to work together for an ideal Web 3.0.”

Mas como diz Jean Baudrillard em “Requiem Pelos Media” (Crítica da Economia Política do Signo, Edições 70, 1972 [1995]):

Qualquer veleidadede de democratizar os conteúdos, de os subverter, de restituir a «transparência do código», de controlar o processo de informação, de organizar uma reversibilidade dos circuitos, ou de tomar o poder sobre os media é sem esperança – se não for quebrado o monopólio da palavra, e isto não para a dar individualmente a cada um, mas para que ela possa ser trocada, ser dada e retribuída (…) e sem que possa jamais ser detida, fixada, armazenada e redistribuída em qualquer local do processo social.

 
		 
	


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