Theorising web 3.

0 : ICTs in a changing 
society
Kreps, DGP and Kimppa, K
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ITP­09­2015­0223

Title Theorising web 3.0 : ICTs in a changing society
Authors Kreps, DGP and Kimppa, K
Type Article
URL This version is available at: http://usir.salford.ac.uk/36694/
Published Date 2015

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THEORISING WEB 3.0
ICTs in a Changing Society

Special Issue Editorial by the Editors

Keywords: information systems; web 2.0; web 3.0; theory

Abstract:
Purpose
In this Editorial introduction the broad phases of web development – the read-only
Web 1.0, the read-write Web 2.0, and the collaborative and Internet of Things Web
3.0 – are examined for the theoretical lenses through which they have been
understood and critiqued.

Design/Methodology/Approach
This is a conceptual piece, in the tradition of drawing on theorising from outside
the Information Systems field, to shed light on developments in ICTs.

Findings
Along with a summary of approaches to Webs 1.0 and 2.0, the Editors contend that
a more complex and post-structuralist theoretical approach to the notion of, and
the phenomenon of Web 3.0, offers a more interesting and appropriate theoretical
grounding for understanding its particularities.

Value
The discussion presages five further papers engaged with ICTs in a changing
society, each of which similarly addresses novel theoretical understandings.

1. Introduction
It is crucial to understand how ICT innovation is associated with change in
society. The complex interrelationships between societal changes and the ICTs
in use by both different societies and different sectors of societies encompass
both technologically deterministic shifts grounded in fundamental
telecommunications infrastructure (e.g. mobile internet in developing countries)
and intensely social emergence trends such as the ever-shifting patterns of social
media usage. Are ICTs reflecting, driving, or simply material-virtual
manifestations of the accelerated change in contemporary society?

A focus on change, on the one hand, and on theorising and understanding

change, on the other, is sometimes lacking in the Information Systems field in
general. Information Technology and People is perhaps one of the few journals
that tries to engage with them. Focussed, as many of us are, on the more day-to-
day issues of how ICTs are used and engaged with in the world around us,
stepping back to look at the broader sweep of recent history is something of a
luxury. To use an old adage, it is sometimes difficult to see the wood for the
trees, especially when the treeline is gradually shifting further up the mountain,
and the mix of species is rebalancing.

The editors are therefore especially pleased to present a Special Issue focussing
on six different aspects of ICTs in a Changing Society. We begin, here, with a
focus on one such change in ICTs and Society – the developments in the world
wide web - and follow with five high quality papers addressing other examples of
the role of ICTs in societal change.

2. Webs 1, 2 and 3.0

We wish to argue, in this editorial, that the most recent change to the world wide
web has expanded it beyond the (mobile)computer screen to which it has – in
Web 1.0 and 2.0 – been largely confined, in such a fundamental manner that how
we understand it must also change. The implication is that other examples of
ICTs in societal change might also require new approaches.

When considering ICTs in a changing society, we must of course also ask – from
what point of view? Although many others have written in the past about the
broadly positivist bias of IS literature (Orlikowski & Baroudi 1991; Lyytinen et al
2007; Becker et al 2007; Paul 2007; Gallivan & Benbunan-Fich 2008; Galliers
2008; Paul 2008; Liu & Myers 2011), our task in this editorial is to suggest,
perhaps, that the moment for a more interpretivist leaning – if it had not before –
has certainly now arrived, in particular with the advent of the Internet of Things,
or what some are calling Web 3.0.

Web 3.0 – a web no longer confined to browsers, or even to screens - is a web in

a world of multi-device, multi-channel and multi-directional throughput of
information, involving sensors and many other devices we never see. The
change this represents is immense. Web 3.0 is a web in which ICTs are all the
more clearly revolving around us, our information, our needs, and in real time: a
web that some are beginning to call, ‘the Stream’ (Spivack 2013). We wish to
consider this latest trend, Web 3.0, and to put forward a suggestion for what it
might mean, and what points of view we might need to understand it. To do so,
we will need first to consider what others are already saying about it, but then
also to consider how Webs 1.0 and 2.0 were theorised. We argue that two
‘turns’ in theorising, that have taken place in the social sciences, are needed for a
correct theorising of Web 3.0 – the poststructuralist turn, by which we might
come to understand information systems as decentred, and more distributed
than heretofore, and the complexity turn, by which we might come to
understand such systems as open systems, with emergent properties that are not
predictable from initial conditions.

2.1 Approaches to Web 3.0

Definitions of Web 3.0 in the literature fall into reasonably clear categories: (i)
those focussed on the technologies, by and large unquestioning with regard to
the social or theoretical aspects; (ii) those focussed (either positively or
negatively) on the social meaning of this development; and (iii) those who
question the entire notion of such theorising. In the first category, perhaps Jim
Hendler’s voice is paradigmatic, writing about the wealth of data flooding the
internet sphere – often described as Big Data – with a definition of Web 3.0 as
“Semantic Web technologies integrated into, or powering, large-scale Web
applications” (Hendler 2009). This is very different from the Internet of Things
definition we believe to be a more accurate depiction of Web 3.0. Many others
echo this broadly technological focus in their understanding of the phenomenon;
(e.g. Lassila and Hendler 2007; Cronk 2007; Tsai et al 2009; Weiss 2010; Pattal
and Zeng 2009). As with Web 2.0, beyond perhaps some use of social network
theory, most papers addressing the phenomenon use little if any truly theoretical
lens to approach it (Chong 2011).

By contrast, in the (smaller) second category, Fuchs et al (2010), focussing on the

social political ramifications, dub Web 3.0 as a web of co-operation – arguably
not that different from the depiction of Web 2.0 as the read-write web. Harris
(2008), Tasner (2010), and Watson (2009) have all written about Web 3.0 in this
vein. For many of these and other authors, Web 2.0 was widely seen as a
“cultural construct profoundly influenced by business rhetoric” (Barasi & Treré
2012; Everitt and Mills, 2009; Fisher, 2010; Fuchs, 2010; Sandoval and Fuchs,
2010; Zeldman 2006), and Web 3.0 will be much the same.

In the (even smaller) third category, Barasi and Treré seem to concur with this
definition of “a new online environment, which will integrate users’ generated
data to create new meaning. In contrast to Web 2.0, which is understood as being
based on users’ participation, Web 3.0 will be based on users’ cooperation.” But
they nonetheless criticize the whole idea of “whether concepts such as Web 1.0,
2.0 and 3.0 can be viable and successful theoretical models for social analysis”
when they are, in fact, “cultural constructs” in themselves (Barasi and Treré
2012:1285).

Our own view of the notion of Web 3.0 is that it is a useful distinction to make, in
the same vein as it is useful to distinguish between primarily agricultural and
primarily industrial economies, although there is always, now, a mixture of both,
and the difference is more social than technological in the case of the web. Such
cultural constructs, for all their historical and theoretical contingency –and
regional specificity - are, in the end, our only windows, and to dismiss them is to
dismiss all theory. We concur with Barasi and Treré that concepts such as Web
2.0 and 3.0 “are entrenched within an evolutionary and temporary
understanding of Web developments” which “tends to give a linear progression
to coexisting social and technical trends” (Barasi and Treré 2012:1269) and that
this is problematic. Nonetheless “the political economy and the neo-liberal
discourses of new Web applications” (Barasi and Treré 2012:1285) cannot be
wished away, and the logics of capitalism in the internet age are indeed both
fast-paced and sweeping large populations with them in their wake (Gill 2003;
Hardt & Negri 2000). Yes, “concepts of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 often carry
assumptions of users’ practices: Web 2.0 is seen as enabling user participation
whilst Web 3.0 is seen as triggering users’ cooperation,” (Barasi and Treré
2012:1269) and this is why, in this editorial, we contend that – for information
systems scholars in particular - Web 3.0 requires an alternative world-view to
characterise it clearly. Like Web 2.0 in comparison to Web 1.0, it is less about
technological innovation and systems than it is about usage, and how what we
have is engaged with, and incorporated into, our day-to-day activities.

Web 3.0, in our view, is more deeply complex than is thus far envisaged in the
literature. Take, for example, the phenomenon a few years ago of #uksnow.
Opinion leader Paul Clarke (Clarke 2009), musing one wintry morning on his
blog, envisioned what could happen with crowd-sourced data as snow
unexpectedly began to fall in the UK. A few hours later, keen coder and opinion
watcher Ben Marsh (Marsh 2009) had created the code needed for a Twitter-
GoogleMaps mashup and #uksnow was available to the blogosphere. Aggregator
sites that comment upon blogs, and highlight ‘trending’ topics on Twitter, picked
up on the existence of this mashup, and, as is the way with the blogosphere,
popularity fed popularity.

Following the instructions on Ben Marsh's website, thousands of people using

the micro-blogging site, Twitter, tweeted two simple pieces of information: the
first three or four digits of the UK postcode of their current location, and a rough
gauge of the heaviness of the snow in their location as a mark out of five, e.g.
“BL7 2/5”. People provided this information to the #uksnow ‘hashtag’ on
Twitter (e.g. they tweeted “#uksnow BL7 2/5”). These tweets, as they were
made across the country, created what is known as a Twitter stream. Such
streams can be ‘captured’ with simple search tools, and either displayed or used
by a web application for another purpose. The resulting stream from the remote
gathering of the #uksnow hashtag provided the data to place one of five different
sized snowflake pictures onto a GoogleMap of the UK, thus creating a real-time
snow-map of the UK at http://www.benmarsh.co.uk/snow/. It was clear that
very often people were standing outside to accurately gauge the snow, and using
their mobile internet device to provide the required tweet. This is easily
deduced from the prevalence of Twitpic photos whose short urls accompanied
the location and snow data in the tweets (e.g. “#uksnow BL7 2/5
http://twitpic.com/ua98w43fh”).

By the end of the first day Microsoft had created – albeit briefly – a clone1. The
application lived on for several more days, as the snowfall continued, but it was
in the first 36 hours that the application gained a critical mass of tweets and
‘user acceptance’. The Baseball World Series was taking place simultaneously in
the United States, but was briefly eclipsed in terms of Twitter traffic volume by
the number of people tweeting about (and to) #uksnow. (Kreps and Fletcher
2010)

This #uksnow event is a good example what we are describing here as Web 3.0.
To borrow and expand upon Orlikowski’s (2006) notion of the scaffold, the
physical infrastructure is readily identified as the mobile internet, encompassing
the internet-enabled mobile devices themselves, the masts which broadcast and
receive the signals within each cell, and the server farms which host and route
the millions of digital files involved. This technological scaffold is coupled with

1See http://twitpic.com/1boki for a screengrab of what had been posted at

http://estc.msn.com/br/intl/twitter/uk/snow.html. Ben Marsh uploaded the image of this clone
helpfully annotated with the internet cliché; “FAIL”
the meteorological scaffold of snow clouds moving across the British Isles, with
varying precipitation according to atmospheric conditions and topographic
elevation. Added into this mix are the cultural phenomena of social networking,
and the microblogging techniques for using a minimally truncated (140
character) version of the (160 character) short messaging service standard, a
political situation in which salt is scarce, a media obsessed with disaster and the
age-old continuous British fascination with the weather. The resulting ‘mashup’
in the narrow sense as a web-based application and in the wider sense as a
specific event of diverse circumstances represents a situation that benefits from
the understanding of Orlikowski’s (2006) scaffolded sociomateriality.

Trying to understand and interpret the phenomenon, from either a techno-

centric or purely human-centred perspective, would miss so much of this
confluence of interrelated aspects of modern life. The scaffolding that makes
#uksnow possible, moreover, displays how emergent cultural and social
practices can come together in response, not just to the weather but to the
possibilities newly inherent in the technological scaffolding of the mobile
internet and the potential of microblogging. #uksnow is temporary – a quick
script that presents itself in response to snow, and is simply forgotten and
discarded once the snow has melted and the performance completed. It also
represents a supremely flexible array of potential implementations for both the
technologies involved and the cultural obsessions they directly cater to.

2.2 Systems
In the past, prior to the World Wide Web, computing systems were small,
discrete, short, and controllable. Since the advent of ICTs, with Web 1.0, Web 2.0,
and now Web 3.0, it has become important to ask: is our notion of ‘system’
sufficiently broad? We contend that our understanding of what a ‘system’ is,
needs to grow, in order best to conceive what is unfolding. In suggesting this, we
acknowledge two things: (i) that many other voices are suggesting the same
thing as part of their own new definitions of the term ‘system’, e.g. Luhman’s
(1995) new social systems theory, Buckley’s (1998) theory of society as a
complex adaptive system, Barabasi’s (2003) concept of scale-free networks,
Wallerstein’s (2004) world systems analysis, and, of course, Castells’ (2000)
networked society; and (ii) that many (if not all) of these authors, working as
they are in a new branch of the field of sociology, may well be unfamiliar to an IS
readership. Whilst it is not our intention in this editorial to provide a review or
introduction to these authors’ work, we do aim to introduce to an IS readership
some of the theoretical underpinnings these authors rest their own ideas upon:
namely, aspects of poststructuralist thought, and of the complexity turn,
(Castellani & Hafferty 2009; Kreps 2015), as they relate specifically to our
tentative new definition of the notion of Web 3.0. We shall look at complexity
first.

2.3 Complexity
Of course, complexity and information systems are not strange bedfellows, and
this paper is not the first to suggest a confluence. A Special Issue in Information
Technology and People (ITP) on Complexity and IS was published in 2006. In
their introductory paper to the ITP Special Issue, Jacucci, Hanseth and Lyytinen
argue that complexity needs to be taken seriously in IS research (Jacucci et al
2006). Benbya & McKelvey’s core paper of this special issue, in particular,
inferred that information systems development projects are complex not only
because they deal with complex technological issues, “but also because of
organisational factors beyond a project team’s control (Benbya & McKelvey
2006). Earlier, Van Aardt (2004), had asserted that any information system
displays the characteristics of a complex adaptive system. But Van Aardt
concentrated on the emergence of order as opposed to causal predetermination,
and the irreversibility of a system’s history and unpredictability of its future,
citing the context of open source software as the best example of IS as a complex
adaptive system. Benbya & McKelvey, went further, suggesting that all
information systems act as complex adaptive systems (Benbya & McKelvey
2006). This was insightful and innovative work, but – in our opinion - fell short
of its promise.

A note by Kallinikos which critiques the Benbya & McKelvey paper (Kallinikos
2006), highlights their continued embrace of a “representational view of
information and coding as mapping of an exogenous reality that is reflected on
what we call ‘user requirements,’ considered both as independent and the
starting point for coding,” (Kallinikos 2006). This, as Kallinikos contends,
“bypasses one of the major, contemporary sources of instability in organisations,
which is no other than the changing organisational conditions (and user
requirements) created by the very development of information systems
themselves. In other words, the ghost is not simply outside but inside the house
as well,” (Kallinikos 2006). The human parts of the information system, in short,
cannot be separated from the information technology such that the IT project
team can then safely proceed without them.

Grounded in Herbert Simon’s seminal paper from 1962 on the ‘Architecture of

Complexity’, cited by both Benbya & McKelvey and by Kallinikos, and the notion
that complex systems have a hierarchical structure, these approaches to
complexity focus upon the distinction between a decomposable system and a
nearly decomposable system, in which in the latter “the interactions among the
subsystems are weak, but not negligible.” (Simon 1962). For Benbya &
McKelvey (2006), then, it seems that the human and non-human ‘subsystems’ of
an information system might be pried apart for the more predictable information
technology project to get underway. Yet, as Agre points out, “hierarchy is a
somewhat more diverse phenomenon than the universal ambitions of Simon's
theory require,” (Agre 2003). Indeed the ambition of Simon to subsume
everything under his notion of hierarchy manages to ignore a great variety of
instances where the modular approach simply does not hold, and his argument is
“a product of its time…: [the] high-water mark of the classical hierarchical
organization” (Agre 2003).

Self-organisation, in fact - the favoured notion of the general systems theory of

the time, and championed by such complexity theorists as Prigogine (1984) and
Kauffman (1995), among others - turns out to be a much better description,
certainly of the reality of contemporary information systems, than hierarchy. As
Agre asserts, “Precisely because Simon's image of hierarchy is spatial, it does not
fit well with the networked world, which collapses many types of distance,”
(Agre 2003). A more durational view is required, and, as Cilliers (1998) reminds
us, the intricate - and often sensitive - relationships between components, both
within and between ‘subsystems,’ are often – for all that they may be considered
‘weak’ – nonetheless the most important aspects of complex systems, capable of
bringing both sweeping and fundamental changes, in the manner of the famous
image from chaos theory of how a single butterfly’s wing could set off a tumble of
unpredictable outcomes flowing around the planet (Kauffman 1995:17).

2.4 Poststructuralist thought

The core philosophical implication of such a re-imagining of systems as is
implied by the insights of complexity is that the safe, clear integrity and
boundaries of systems, as we have conceived them in the past, begin to dissolve.
Expanding, for a moment, our understanding of systems beyond the simple
computing information systems usually discussed in IS literature, one of the core
insights of structuralist thought in the 20th century was that those things which,
in the 19th century and before, we had placed at the centre of a broad notion of
‘systems’, were, in fact, not central, but determined by the systems themselves
(Joseph 2012). The poststructuralist thought of the 1960s and thereafter
contributed the further insight that such structure was itself all too often not
even ‘systematic’: ‘open’ systems (Bertalanffy 1950), in socio-historical contexts,
are self-organising and self-determining (Foucault 1997), and changing so
continuously as to render any systemic definition redundant as soon as it is
made.

The most basic, traditional definition of a system, of course, with which most
information technologists are familiar, is that it consists of an integrated whole
with a boundary, an inside, and an outside. An information system might
similarly be defined as an integrated system of hardware and software used by
people and organizations to create, collect and process data. Yet just as
interpretivist researchers will immediately suggest that an information system is
not merely ‘used’ by people and organizations, but that the system might be
considered to include, in complicated interrelationships of change and
constraint, those people and organizations, so the notion of systems as
integrated wholes, with insides, outsides, and boundaries, is itself being
challenged by these new complex understandings.

It is our contention that Web 3.0 is paradigmatic of both these practical, complex
systems, and of the philosophical shift required to understand them. To try to
grasp – as our first category of commentators, epitomised by Hendler, above, do -
the nature of much of what is transpiring in Web 3.0, as a traditional
‘information system,’ we suggest, is, for example, like using soil science –
although useful and accurate in its own right for studying soil - to try to
understand agriculture as a whole. This approach is to ignore all the wealth of
additional materials such as differing kinds and gradations of seeds, the
attention of animals and birds, the changeability of the weather, and the whole
range of different kinds of machinery put to work to manage that soil. This
approach, moreover, does not even begin considering the whole historical,
cultural, regional and transnational complexity of the human agricultural
communities and agri-economies working those machines, sourcing and planting
those seeds, and managing that soil. So, just as the soil scientist must work with
the seed scientist, the irrigation technician with the farm equipment
manufacturer, and all in the end with the farmer, who must in turn work with the
seed wholesaler and the vagaries of the market for his/her product, so the
information technologist must understand that what has been conceived as a
‘system,’ amongst information technologists, is in fact something far more
complex and contingent.

Theoretical tools that conceive information communication technologies (ICTs)

not merely as open, but as complex systems, in short, must be developed, and not
only open in the sense of incorporating a range of human and other factors not
native to the information technology itself, but open in the sense of duration.
Much of what transpires in what we categorise as Web 3.0, in short, is emergent,
in the sense used by complexity theorists such as Kauffman (1995), for whom a
complex whole can “exhibit collective properties, ‘emergent’ features that are
lawful in their own right.” (Kaufmann 1995: viii).

2.5 Post-systems thought

A number of authors in the Information Systems field have begun to describe
ways in which such a post-‘systems’ theoretical approach might be carved out,
most notably Claudio Ciborra (2002), but also Wanda Orlikowski
(2002;2006;2008) and others. As the latter in particular points out, the notion
of practices can be very useful in conceiving the more durational aspects of such
events (Schatzki 2001), but this ‘practice turn’ remains an under-theorised,
diverse collection of approaches, and needs more robust ideas to move forward.
But the late information scientist Claudio Ciborra placed a concern for human
existence and for our working lives at the core of any study of ICTs and their use
in organisations. This work proves more fruitful for our discussion.
Information systems studies moreover increasingly are turning to studying ICTs
in society and in the home, outside of organisational contexts, as ICTs become
ever more a part of our day-to-day lives: social media in particular epitomises
the more social, domestic use of ICTs outside of organisational contexts,
underscoring the importance of placing people at the core of our understanding
of ICTs. Yet in order to do so, as has been the case in many other respects,
Information Systems studies must continue to turn to theoretical traditions
outside of the discipline to properly understand what is going on. So, in sum, to
conceive of Web 3.0 as merely a new ‘ICT system’ is to close off a great array of
different elements of what is in fact going on within this phenomenon, and
thereby not to understand it at all.

3. Theorising the History of the Web

It is our contention, in this paper, that Web 3.0 - a web that includes much more
than data and hypertext, and user-involvement much deeper than content
provision, requires a philosophical shift amongst information systems scholars
both to understand and to make use of that epithet. To highlight Web 3.0 in
distinction to Web 1.0 or Web 2.0 we present a table (Table 1) that outlines what
we claim as the key features of each stage in terms of their technical, social and
theoretical differentiators. While the table can by no means be exhaustive we
have used key indicative features that assist in both drawing close associations
between these aspects within each specific ‘stage’ as well as revealing the
difference within specific features across ‘stages’. We use the term ‘stage’
intentionally in this table to indicate a notion of performativity and its
significance rather than to suggest a simplistic or direct technical progression. In
the case of Web 3.0 particularly the stage does not coalesce around a set of
technical features as its central defining rationale but rather as the scene-setting
for events.

Web 1.0, a label that has only been applied retrospectively, represents the
broadcast model web of static HTML pages primarily served to desktop
computers, and which was primarily understood through the theoretical
frameworks of Computer-mediated communications, audience research and
socio-technical approaches in which users were positioned as consumers of
specific content. A hallmark of Web 1.0 is a technical worldview that facilitated
an approach prioritising integrated structured documents. Both the technology
and the design sentiment of Web 1.0 echoed this understanding. The political
agenda of research around Web 1.0 regularly drew upon specific technological
and political icons but most noticeably that of the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link
and the Electronic Freedom Foundation respectively. Rheingold’s “The Virtual
Community” (1993) became the celebratory textbook for Web 1.0 that
positioned – in a clearly technologically determinist manner - its technologies as
the harbinger of digital utopia founded upon specific democratising ideals. These
claims were more easily made in a social environment where - up until 1995 -
there were still some forms of restrictions on the commercial use of the Web and
the internet more broadly. However, the work of Rheingold was not accepted
uncritically and the works of, for example, McLuhan (1964) and Fiske (1982)
already laid out positions that rejected the notion of a passive audience
consuming broadcast messages, or democratic liberation achieved through
specific forms of media consumption. While the prevailing notion of Web 1.0 was
defined through a print analogy tied to wired networks of desktop computers the
opportunity and scope for critique was equally ultimately limited in its potential.

Web 2.0 is generally regarded as the user-generated content world of social-

networks, blogs and a database-driven web (O’Reilley 2007) – and has been
frequently described within the theoretical framework of social network analysis
(e.g. Kirchoff et al 2008; Hercheui 2011), and with reference to Bourdieu’s
notions of field and habitus (Song 2010; Levina & Orlikowski 2009), as well as
being associated with concepts of sociomateriality. The “habitus” of individuals is
the source of meaning-making and social action. “As a ‘system of durable and
transposable dispositions which [functions] as a matrix of perceptions,
appreciations, and actions’, it is a mode of engagement that is ‘acquired through
lasting exposure to particular social conditions and conditionings” (Song
2010:256). The relationship of habitus to that of “field” is that as “habitus
mediates between an individual and a given social environment, it ‘operates like
a spring that needs an external trigger and thus it cannot be considered in
isolation from the particular social worlds or “fields” within which it evolves’
(Bourdieu 1990; Song 2010). Web 2.0 is presented in this context through
examples of the “users” of interactive sites whose content is primarily provided
by them but is shaped by the nature and theme of the site. This framing conforms
Web 2.0 to notions of a relationship between field and habitus: users of Web 2.0,
in other words, Song and Orlikowski argue, take up the ‘habitus’ of use
determined by the ‘field’ of Web 2.0.

Web 3.0 is different. Regarded at the least as a more co-operative version of the
read-write approach of Web 2.0, but – we argue – so deeply impacted by the
Internet of Things as to be something that has outgrown the browser-on-screen
location of Web 1.0 and 2.0, Web 3.0 is phenomenon in which we are no longer
users but part of the applications that emerge and disappear, producers, subjects
and beneficiaries of the Big Data that characterises it. Albeit perhaps
instantiated in Web 2.0 technologies, and in the Internet of Things, Web 3.0 is
larger than both, and qualitatively different. We argue that the notion of
‘habitus’ in the context of Web 3.0 does not capture the subtlety or fluidity of the
human-nonhuman relationship expressed on this stage. Moreover, Bergson’s
understanding of the distinction between habit and memory, outlined in Matter
and Memory (Bergson 1908) and how Deleuze developed this in the 1960s and
later, (Deleuze 1966; 1986; 1987) whereby habit is described as something
learned by rote and instantiated in the present, can be read as breaking down the
distinction between habitus and field completely. The Deleuzian critique of such
notions of identity formation has been explored in relation to virtual
environments and social networking profiles (Kreps 2008, 2010). Bourdieu’s
fields are also susceptible to a Foucauldian critique in which it can be argued that
discursive formations, situated in a field of knowledge/power, display a
microphysics of power far more subtle and ubiquitous than the rather top-down
understanding of power displayed in the notion of fields (Foucault 1995). The
philosopher/sociologist debate between the ideas of Foucault and Bourdieu is
not one to rehearse in any depth in this editorial. The point here, we contend, is
that the notion of ‘habit’ requires repetition and enough time to develop –
whether it is the ‘working class’ habit in Bourdieu’s reading or the mechanistic
repetition – ‘learning by rote’ – by which Bergson distinguishes habit from
memory. In the bricolage-oriented, mangled (Pickering 1995) world of the
mobile mashup, or of the twittersphere, where practices are emergent,
spontaneous and flaneurial, there simply isn’t enough time to develop a habit:
the speed of development and emergence here makes notions of habitus
redundant.

In the Web 3.0 context our analysis problematises even the notion of users and
developers: the user becomes or contributes data; users are no longer confined
to a Web 1.0 passivity or merely the labourers and tools for the generation of
content within Web 2.0 social networking. The celebrated phenomenon of
reblogging and retweeting, of being part of a crowd from which data is sourced,
turns ‘users’ into channels – the cogs of a machine, part of the network and
elements of a wider ‘application.’ The barriers to participation (in order to
perform) have become much lower, enabling more and more ‘users’ to ‘develop’
complex mashups – with the potentially teleological argument that not many
people need to write code anymore. Google App Inventor for example enables
even the most casual experimenter to produce what might appear to be highly
complex technical ‘systems’: the point is that the technologies have become
largely invisible; it is the idea, the spontaneity, the linkages, that have become
 paramount. We don’t need to be mechanics to drive a car, and creating web
applications is rapidly becoming a similar social phenomenon.

We present below, then, a table in which we try to capture the main features,
hardware, software, and software development practices of Webs 1.0, 2.0, and
3.0, alongside the theoretical frameworks through which the first two have
primarily been interpreted, and through which we believe the third is best
approached.

Stage Main feature Hardware Software Software Theoretical Frameworks

development
Web Website Desktop Static HTML Integrated Standard broadcast CMC / socio-technical
1.0 publishing computer, pages single publishing / McLuhan / Fisk
static server, published document ‘democratised’ – [passive audience
information wired by web first big expansion receiving broadcast
Internet author of publishing since model]
printing press
[utopian and/or
restrictive technical
in scope]
Web Website Desktop or Database Separation of Social network Song – Bourdieu’s
2.0 presenting laptop driven form and theory [instrumental field/habitus
user computer, website content of and lacking [Bergson/Deleuze
generated server, with document sociological depth] critique of notions of
content wired/wifi content habit/memory]
Internet uploaded by
users Orlikowski –
employing sociomateriality.
HTML, CSS, [Bourdieu habitus
PHP, constrained]
Javascript discursive practice
Web Application Desktop or Mashup of Distributed Latour (1992, 2004) BRICOLAGE / mangle
3.0 using crowd- laptop HTML, CSS, components – actor network, / complexity
sourced data, computer, PHP, and services seamless web of Bergson
Internet of smartphone JavaScript, mashup heterogeneous /Derrida/Deleuze –
Things s, server, APIs, and beyond the interconnections material-discursive;
wired/wifi/ public document [lacking temporal seamless
Mobile micro- model – understanding of flow and decentred
Internet blogging IM document power] knowledge/power
service that hits the bricoleur discourse -
browser is no flaneur
longer the
centre-piece

Table 1 Comparisons of Webs 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 technical, social and theoretical frameworks

We hope the above characterisation of Web 3.0, its development from what has
gone before, and its differences, offers readers of the Special Issue a framework
within which to better understand ICTs in a changing society. The five papers
we have gathered together for this issue each – in their own way – addresses
ICTs and societal change with a similarly broad perspective, and asks us to think
differently.
8. The Special Issue
We cannot understand how society changes today – or how best to theorise it - if
we do not know how it has changed - or how it was theorised - yesterday. Arthur
Tatnall looks at “Computer Education and Societal Change: History of Early
Courses in Computing in Universities and Schools in Victoria”. Looking back over
50 years of computing, education and computer education in Victoria, Australia,
Tatnall uses actor-network theory in his analysis of the effects people,
organisations, processes, technologies, and a variety of human and non-human
actors have had upon computing education. There is much here that those
engaged in creating new curricula and technologies can learn from – the benefit
of hindsight being all too rare in the fast pace of contemporary change. Over the
period covered different paradigms have been dominant in both designing and
explaining the development of the range of systems used, as Tatnall makes clear.
There is a need for further research in how what we have described as Web 3.0
will affect the development of educational systems in both schools and
universities. Education, like big ships, typically turns very slowly, but there is an
imperative inherent in the current shift to Web 3.0 that new approaches will be
needed soon if we are to avoid educating people in the wrong skills.

In their paper “ICT and Environmental Sustainability in a Changing Society: The

View of Ecological World Systems Theory” Lennerfors, Fors and van Rooijen look
into the possibilities and threats ICTs create for the environment. Although ICTs
can help to decrease our ecological footprint by lessening the need for more
traditional industrial solutions, they can also increase it through, for example,
the need to extract rare earths, or the need for new and seemingly always bigger
server farms. The problem with looking into ICTs effect on the environment,
however, is that much research tends to stay at the level of a single or a few
examples, while holistic approaches are missing. To fill this gap, Lennerfors et al
offer a tour through ecological world systems theory, which they propose as a
possible lens to clarify our perception of the changes ICTs cause in society.

Another way to look at the environmental issues ICTs create is offered by

Patrignani and Whitehouse in their paper “Slow Tech: Bridging Computer Ethics
and Business Ethics”. They tie the discussion of environment even more strongly
to societal change, and offer two examples in which computer ethics in a
business context becomes ‘slow tech’. What slow tech means, according to
Patrignani and Whitehouse, is similar to the notion of ‘slow food’: it must be
good, meeting the needs of the humans using and being targeted by the systems;
clean, taking the environment into account and not polluting; and fair, taking
into account the rights of those who produce the applications.

Both Lennerfors et al and Patrignani and Whitehouse look at the current stage of
ICTs, offering us another way to do things: eschewing growth for growth’s sake
in favour of new and better ways forward through the virtual. This kind of
approach promises much for the future, and how Web 3.0 could truly realise
better, and environmentally sustainable goals. Taking their cue to look at things
more holistically, rather than only through the lenses of traditional information
systems theories, we may yet get ourselves on the right path.
Lahtiranta, Koskinen, Knaapi-Junnila and Nurminen focus on changes in society
through “Sensemaking in the Personal Health Space”. In their paper they tackle
some of the issues arising from patients becoming more empowered in health
care services that are having to respond to greater and greater need. This creates
conflicts especially coupled with the need for more cost effective services.
Lahtiranta et al offer a framework through which to clarify the situation and a
case study on how to apply the framework to practice and achieve better results
such as self-care.

Migrants change societies. They do it just by migrating to a new place, either by

starting a new community within a community or strengthening an existing one.
In the article “Is The Mobile Phone Old Wine in a New Bottle? A Polemic on
Communication-Based Acculturation Research” Aricat looks at the effect of the
mobile phone on this dynamic: is its effect neglible, with old traditions
continuing as before, just with new tools. Or is it – at least in the case of South
Asian ethnic groups migrating to Singapore seeking work – that mobile phones
rather perpetuate separation than help overcome it. Societal change has many
aspects, of course, and a fuller picture of the situation only opens from the article
itself.

Even though both Lahtiranta et al as well as Aricat look at slices of the new
environment, they both look at how the latest stage empowers, or fails to
empower, users, through new distributed components and services. In the case
of Lahtiranta et al, hope seems to come from the new personal health services
that could enable users form a more holistic picture of themselves and their
position in the world. In Aricat’s more pessimistic piece even though some new
possibilities open, they do not enhance the position of the migrants as could be
expected.

All five articles can be seen through a lens of the development of IS design
through the three stages (and beyond) of the development of ICTs, or Webs, as
described above. They do indeed answer to the call’s main request of helping us
“understand how ICT innovation is associated with change in society”. As we had
far more potential specific topic areas in the call than there is space in a Special
Issue, it is not surprising that some issues were not handled – and even very
important ones such as Gender Diversity in ICT or ICT use in Peace and War
were not touched on this time. However, we are happy to note, that within the
five accepted papers most of the areas in the call (on top of the two mentioned
before), Computers and Work, Ethics of Computing, History of Computing, ICT
and Society, ICT and Sustainable Development, Information Technology: Misuse
and The Law, Social Accountability and Computing, Social Implications of
Computers in Developing Countries, and Virtuality and Society are handled to
one degree or another.

We want to thank all the authors who enabled this Special Issue for their
contribution, and hope that readers will take with them a better understanding
of the current stage of IS, ICT and Web development and what it means to the
people using them.
 David Kreps and Kai Kimppa

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