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Future Internet 2010, 2, 41-59; doi:10.3390/fi2010041
future internet
ISSN 1999-5903
www.mdpi.com/journal/futureinternet
Article
Theoretical Foundations of the Web: Cognition,
Communication, and Co-Operation. Towards an Understanding
of Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0
Christian Fuchs *, Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Matthias Schafranek, Celina Raffl, Marisol Sandoval
and Robert Bichler
Unified Theory of Information Research Group, ICT&S Center: Advanced Studies and Research in
Information and Communication Technologies & Society; University of Salzburg, Sigmund Haffner
Gasse 18, 5020 Salzburg, Austria; E-Mails: wolfgang.hofkirchner@sbg.ac.at (W.H.);
matthias.schafranek@sbg.ac.at (M.S.); celina.raffl@sbg.ac.at (C.R.);
marisol.sandoval@sbg.ac.at (M.S.); robert.bichler@uti.at (R.B.)
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: christian.fuchs@sbg.ac.at;
Tel.: +43 662 8044 – 4823.
Received: 13 November 2009; in revised form: 17 February 2010 / Accepted: 18 February 2010 /
Published: 19 February 2010
Abstract: Currently, there is much talk of Web 2.0 and Social Software. A common
understanding of these notions is not yet in existence. The question of what makes Social
Software social has thus far also remained unacknowledged. In this paper we provide a
theoretical understanding of these notions by outlining a model of the Web as a techno-
social system that enhances human cognition towards communication and co-operation.
According to this understanding, we identify three qualities of the Web, namely Web 1.0 as
a Web of cognition, Web 2.0 as a Web of human communication, and Web 3.0 as a Web of
co-operation. We use the terms Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 not in a technical sense, but for
describing and characterizing the social dynamics and information processes that are part of
the Internet.
Keywords: World Wide Web; social theory; cognition; communication; co-operation;
Social Software; Web 1.0; Web 2.0; Web 3.0
OPEN ACCESS
Future Internet 2010, 2
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1. Introduction
Among the top 100 US Websites (in terms of estimated monthly unique visitors) we no longer only
find traditional Websites that were established in the 1990s (such as yahoo.com, msn.com, ebay.com,
Microsoft.com, aol.com, amazon.com), but also new Websites and platforms such as facebook.com
(#3, 100M+ users), youtube.com (#5, 80M+ users), wikipedia.org (#7, 74M+ users), myspace.com
(#12, 54M+ users), craigslist.org (#16, 50M+ users), blogspot.com (#14, 52M+ users), wordpress.com
(#23, 31M+ users), flickr.com (#31, 21M+ users), blogger.com (#37, 19M+ users), metacafe.com
(#67, 11M+ users), and monster.com (#33, 20M+ users) [47].
Such sites do not focus on information provision, but either combine several traditional Internet
functions (information, data upload and sharing, email, discussion boards, multimedia, etc.) as in the
case of social networking platforms or employ relative novel forms of information and communication
such as in the case of wikis, blogging, and tagging. Terms such as “Web 2.0” and “Social Software”
that should indicate that the Web has become strongly communicative, are used frequently for
describing such platforms.
The notions of Social Software and Web 2.0 have thus far been vague; there is no common
understanding in existence. The concepts seem to be centered on the notions of online communication,
community-formation, and collaboration. In some definitions only one of these three elements is
present, in others they are combined. So far it remains unclear what exactly is novel and what is social
about it. What seems obvious is that Web 2.0 is not a technological novelty since the technological
basis of these platforms and networks (such as Wikis, Ajax, etc.) have been developed years before
terms such as Social Software and Web 2.0 have emerged. This view suggests that these notions refer
to a social novelty. In this paper we want to contribute to the theoretical clarification of notions like
Web 2.0 and Social Software by defining the Web as techno-social system. We try to answer the
question, which understandings of Social Software and Web 2.0 exist, and how they can be typified.
Furthermore, we analyze what is social about Social Software (section 2) by referring to traditional
sociological understandings of sociality. In section 3, we discuss how the Web can be explained as a
dynamic process. The research methods employed in this paper are dialectical social theory
construction and systems theory, both based on the results of a literature survey.
The basic research question underlying this paper is: how should the World Wide Web be defined?
For dealing with this question, we treat further questions: which social theories can be employed for
defining the World Wide Web? What are the political implications of employing social theories for
defining the World Wide Web? For us, these research tasks also have a normative dimension.
Therefore, we are not just interested in a social theory of the Internet, but in a critical social theory of
the Internet that helps to understand how computing in general and Internet and World Wide Web
usage in particular can help to improve the situation of humanity and to establish a better world.
The problem is that in current academic, private, and public debates, many observers claim that the
World Wide Web has become more social.. However, the notion of sociality underlying these claims,
is mostly not really reflected. There is a lack of thinking about what sociality means and what sociality
on the World Wide Web means in scholarly and non-scholarly discussions about changes of the Web.
We therefore think that social theory is needed for helping scholars and citizens to gain a more precise
understanding of sociality and sociality on the Web. The goal of our work is to contribute to this task.
Future Internet 2010, 2
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David Beer and Roger Burrows [1] have argued already in 2007 that a sociology of and in Web 2.0
is needed. So far there is no theoretical clarification of these notions available. Most definitions of
these terms are marketing based or rather unreflected. The paper at hand seeks to establish a sociology
of Web 2.0 and Social Software by clarifying their theoretical foundations from a sociological view.
One of the authors has recently argued that what is primarily needed is not a phenomenology or
empirical social research of the Web, but a critical theory of the Internet and society because changing
societal circumstances create situations, in which new concepts need to be clarified and social
problems emerge, which need to be solved [2].
We identify three qualities of the World Wide Web, namely Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0. We
use the terms Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 not in a technical sense, but for describing and
characterizing the social dynamics and information processes that are part of the Internet. These
notions are based on the idea of knowledge as a threefold dynamic process of cognition,
communication, and co-operation [3-4]. In our terms the notion of the Web refers to the qualities of the
Web as a techno-social system that enhance human cognition, communication, and co-operation.
Cognition is the necessary prerequisite for communication and the precondition for the emergence of
co-operation. In other words: in order to co-operate you need to communicate and in order to
communicate you need to cognize. The three types of Web that we identify are based on an analytical
distinction. This distinction does not imply a temporal order (such as in versions of a software, where
the upper version always exists at a later point of time) or an evolutionary process. The distinction
indicates that all Web 3.0 applications (co-operation) and processes also include aspects of
communication and cognition and that all Web 2.0 applications (communication) also include
cognition. The distinction is based on the insight of knowledge as threefold process that all
communication processes require cognition, but not all cognition processes result in communication,
and that all co-operation processes require communication and cognition, but not all cognition and
communication processes result in co-operation.
By cognition we want to refer to the understanding that a person, on a subjective systemic
knowledge,
1
connects him- or herself to another person by using certain mediating systems. When it
comes to feedback, the persons enter an objective mutual relationship, i.e., communication.
Communicating knowledge from one system to another causes structural changes in the receiving
system. From communication processes shared or jointly produced resources can emerge, i.e., co-
operation. These processes represent thus one important dimension, against which qualities of the
World Wide Web have to be assessed.
Based on our understanding of knowledge as a dynamic process, we outline three qualities of the
World Wide Web. Accordingly, we define Web 1.0 as a tool for cognition, Web 2.0 as a medium for
human communication, and Web 3.0 as networked digital technology that supports human co-
operation.
1
The cognitive structural patterns that are stored in neural networks within the brains of individual human agents can be
termed subjective knowledge.
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2. Three Notions of Sociality for the Analysis of Social Software
By reviewing definitions of Web 2.0 and Social Software, we found out that these two terms are in
most cases used interchangeably and that there are different understandings and concepts of what is
termed social that are underlying these attempts. We will outline these notions in this chapter and work
out our own understanding, which will differentiate between Social Software and Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, in
section 3.
2.1. A Structure-Based View of Sociality
The first understanding of Social Software is based on the Durkheimian notion of the social: All
software is social in the sense that it is a product of social processes. It is produced by humans in social
relations. It objectifies knowledge that is produced in society, and it is applied and used in social
systems. Applying Durkheim’s notion of social facts to software means that all software applications
are social. They are fixed and objectified social structures. Also if a user sits in front of a screen alone
and browses information on the World Wide Web, s/he engages in sociality, because, according to
Durkheim, the social facts the user is confronted with on the WWW have an existence of their own,
independent of individual manifestations. Web technologies and Web contents therefore are social
facts. “A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exerting on the individual an
external constraint; or: which is general over the whole of a given society whilst having an existence of
its own, independent of its individual manifestation” [5]. Based on this Durkheimian understanding of
the social, Rainer Dringenberg [6] argues that the Web is a social fact because it is a structure that is
cognized, internalized and about which many people interact in everyday life. Martin Rost [7] argues
that computer networks are social facts, because they are types of social functions: a social reality sui
generis, that has functions in and shapes society. Once created, they would fulfill certain specific
functions, just like other subsystems of society. Dourish [8] argues that all digital systems – computer
hardware, software, periphery, the Internet, etc. – are social in the sense that they objectify human
intentions, goals, interests, and understandings, i.e., they are social facts defined by human actors and
they influence the behaviour of others. He says that these artefacts are based on “commonly held social
understandings” [8].
For Durkheim, social facts are “existing outside the consciousness of the individual”, “penetrate us
by imposing themselves upon us”; they are crystallized and objectified; they are “beliefs, tendencies
and practices of the group taken collectively” [5]. If we take together the views by Dringenberg, Rost,
and Dourish, then they tell us that technological artefacts such as computers or computer networks
reflect certain common interpretations of the world of certain groups and by using technologies these
meanings shape our thinking and action. Durkheim mentioned moral rules, aphorisms, popular
sayings, articles of faith, standards of taste, laws, and the financial system as examples of social facts.
He did not mention technology. Nonetheless his notion can also be applied to technologies. One can
understand the approach of the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) as being implicitly
Durkheimian. Pinch and Bijker [9] argue that technologies are socially constructed, their design is a
manifestation of how groups interpret the social world, which problems they see, and which solutions
to these problems they consider adequate. “Meanings can get embedded in new artefacts” [10].
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Langdon Winner makes an even stronger claim by arguing that artefacts have politics. “Many
technical devices and systems that are important in everyday life contain possibilities for many
different ways of ordering human activity. […] choices tend to become strongly fixed in material
equipment […]. In that sense, technological innovations are similar to legislative acts or political
foundings that establish a framework for public order that will endure over many generations” [11].
Computer hardware and software therefore can be said to incorporate collective meanings and
“commonly held social understandings” [8] that influence humans in their decisions and action while
using these technologies. Here we find both the aspect of collective tendencies and imposition that
Durkheim saw as important for social facts. In the case of content production and computer-mediated
communication, content is designed by users and communicated via networks. In this sense, it can be
said that digital content reflects the collective meanings that shape the thinking and action of
individuals and is therefore also an expression of social facts. The approaches by Dringenberg [6],
Rost [7], and Dourish [8] are close to Durkheim [5] because they tell us that computers, networks, and
content express ubiquitous facts about society that shape action and thinking of individuals.
2.2. An Action-Based View of Sociality
The second understanding of sociality that is applied in definitions of Web 2.0 and Social Software
is based on Max Weber. His central categories of sociology are social action and social relations:
“Action is ’social’ insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the behavior of others and is
thereby oriented in its course“ [12]. “The term ’social relationship‘ will be used to denote the behavior
of a plurality of actors insofar as, in its meaningful content, the action of each takes account of that of
the others and is oriented in these terms“ [12]. These categories are relevant for the discussion about
Social Software, because they allow a distinction between individual and social activities: “Not every
kind of action, even of overt action, is ’social’ in the sense of the present discussion. Overt action is
not social if it is oriented solely to the behavior of inanimate objects. For example, religious behavior
is not social if it is simply a matter of contemplation or of solitary prayer. [...] Not every type of
contact of human beings has a social character; this is rather confined to cases where the actor's
behavior is meaningfully oriented to that of others“ [12]. Weber stresses that for behavior being
considered as social relation, it needs to be a meaningful symbolic interaction between human actors,
hence communication.
According to this understanding, Social Software and Web 2.0 are oriented on applications that
allow human communication. The social character can be distinguished from activities such as writing
texts with a word processor or reading online texts: “Social software's purpose is dealing with groups,
or interactions between people. This is as opposed to conventional software like Microsoft Word,
which although it may have collaborative features (‘track changes‘) is not primarily social. (Those
features could learn a lot from Social Software however.) The primary constraint of Social Software is
in the design process: Human factors and group dynamics introduce design difficulties that aren't
obvious without considering psychology and human nature“ [13].
Such understandings include a wide set of digital communication technologies; they are broad,
inclusive definitions, such as the one of Shirky [14]: “Social software, software that supports group
communications […]. Because there are so many patterns of group interaction, Social Software is a
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much larger category than things like groupware or online communities – though it includes those
things, not all group communication is business-focused or communal. One of the few commonalities
in this big category is that Social Software is unique to the Web in a way that software for broadcast or
personal communications are not“.
Pascu et al. [15] provide a similar definition. They describe “Internet 2” or “Social Computing” as
technologies that “exploit the Internet’s connectivity dimension to support the networking of relevant
people and content“. The user is an integral part in the production process of content, tastes, emotions,
goods, contacts, relevance, reputation, feedback, storage and server capacity, connectivity, and
intelligence. The central feature is communication: “These applications build on the capacity of ICT to
increase possibilities for interpersonal communication. Blogs, wiki, voice over IP, podcast, taste
sharing and social networking services all increase the possibility of finding other people like us, and
therefore enhance communication possibilities and their value.“ Coates [16] gives examples for the
technologies that are included: “Social Software can be loosely defined as software which supports,
extends, or derives added value from, human social behaviour – message-boards, musical taste-
sharing, photo-sharing, instant messaging, mailing lists, social networking“.
danah boyd [17] stresses that Social Software is about dynamic interaction: “The fact is that Social
Software has come to reference a particular set of technologies developed in the post-Web-bust era. In
other words, in practice, ‘Social Software‘ is about a movement, not simply a category of technologies.
It’s about recognizing that the era of e-commerce centred business models is over; we’ve moved on to
Web software that is all about letting people interact with people and data in a fluid way. It’s about
recognizing that the Web can be more than a broadcast channel; collections of user-generated content
can have value. No matter what, it is indeed about the new but the new has nothing to do with
technology; it has to do with attitude“ [17]. boyd argues that the specific characteristic of Web 2.0 is
that it allows the appropriation of global knowledge in local contexts (Web 2.0 as glocalization of
communication): “Web2.0 is about glocalization, it is about making global information available to
local social contexts and giving people the flexibility to find, organize, share and create information in
a locally meaningful fashion that is globally accessible. […] It is about new network structures that
emerge out of global and local structures“ [18].
2.3. A Co-Operation-Based View of Sociality
A third understanding of the social is based on the notions of community and co-operation, as
elaborated by Tönnies and Marx [19-21]. For Ferdinand Tönnies, co-operation is conceived in the
form of “sociality as community”. He argues that “the very existence of Gemeinschaft rests in the
consciousness of belonging together and the affirmation of the condition of mutual dependence” [19],
whereas Gesellschaft (society) for him is a concept in which “reference is only to the objective fact of
a unity based on common traits and activities and other external phenomena” [19]. Communities
would have to do with harmonious consensus of wills, folkways, belief, mores, the family, the village,
kinship, inherited status, agriculture, morality, essential will, and togetherness. Communities are about
the feelings of togetherness and values.
Marx discusses community aspects of society with the help of the notion of co-operation. “By
social we understand the co-operation of several individuals, no matter under what conditions, in what
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manner and to what end” [20]. Marx argued that co-operation is the “Essence of Society”. The basic
idea underlying Marx’s notion of co-operation is that many human beings work together in order to
produce goods that satisfy human needs and that hence also ownership of the means of production
should be co-operative. In a capitalist society, humans would be alienated from their own essence due
to wage labour and exploitation. Capitalism would produce structural forms of exploitation that are at
the same time also preconditions for a co-operative society. The true species-being would only be
possible if man “really brings out all his species-powers – something which in turn is only possible
through the cooperative action of all of mankind“ [21]. For Marx a co-operative society is the
realization of the co-operative essence of humans and society.
Tönnies’ and Marx’s notions of the social have in common the idea that humans work together in
order to produce new qualities of society, which can be material or immaterial.
The third understanding of Social Software and Web 2.0 in the Tönniesian sense is focused on
technologies that allow online community building. It is related to the concept of virtual communities,
which gains new relevance by the rise of social networking platforms such as MySpace, Facebook,
Friendster, StudiVZ, etc. Alby gives such an understanding of Social Software: “The notion of Social
Software is normally used for systems, by which humans communicate, collaborate or interact in any
other way. […] As this seems to be too broad, another criterion for Social Software is that it must
advance and support the formation and the self-management of a community; such a software should
allow the community to rule itself” [22
2
]. Alby distinguishes two forms of Social Software: Social
Software focusing on communication (e.g., instant messaging, chat), and Social Software, in which the
content is produced or enhanced by a community (e.g., Wikipedia, Web-based discussion forums).
For Howard Rheingold and his working group, the concept of Social Software has to do with social
networks that bring people together: “Social software is a set of tools that enable group-forming
networks to emerge quickly. It includes numerous media, utilities, and applications that empower
individual efforts, link individuals together into larger aggregates, interconnect groups, provide
metadata about network dynamics, flows, and traffic, allowing social networks to form, clump,
become visible, and be measured, tracked, and interconnected” [23].
For Thomas Burg [24] social networks are also the central feature of Social Software: “Social
Software comprises all of the information and communication technologies that enable the digital
networking of individuals and groups. [...] Social Software enables the development of ad-hoc,
(non-)centralized networks between users. This kind of network is ostensibly, to borrow a phrase from
emergence theory, more intelligent than the sum of the individual parts.“ Social software would be
software that “fosters increasingly technologically supported social networking via the Internet“ [25].
This would particularly include weblogs. Fischer [26] also focuses on the idea of social networking.
To form a networked group, requires shared meanings, i.e., a certain degree of community, and the
co-operative creation of bonds. Therefore, we think that the notions by Saveri et al. [23], Burg [24],
and Fischer [25] can be connected to Tönnies [19] and Marx [20-21].
The idea of goods as emergent qualities of human co-operation, as outlined by Marx, is important
for the third understanding of Web 2.0 and Social Software: Tim O’Reilly [27-28] stresses network
effects that stem from the participation of many humans and collective intelligence as important
2
Comment: Translation by the authors.
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features of Web 2.0. O’Reilly [27] mentions the following attributes as the main characteristics of Web
2.0: radical decentralization, radical trust, participation instead of publishing, users as contributors,
rich user experience, the long tail, the Web as platform, control of one’s own data, remixing data,
collective intelligence, attitudes, better software by more users, play, undetermined user behaviour. He
provides the following more formal definition: “Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all
connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of
that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use
it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing
their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through
an ‘architecture of participation’, and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user
experiences“ [28]. That co-operation produces collective knowledge on the Web also points towards a
transformation in which readers become writers. Hence Dan Gillmor [29] argues that the Web has
been transformed into a read/write-Web in which users can “all write, not just read, in ways never
before possible. For the first time in history, at least in the developed world, anyone with a computer
and Internet connection could own a press. Just about anyone could make the news.“
Based on O’Reilly, several authors have developed similar concepts of Web 2.0 as a platform for
co-operation. For Paul Miller [30] the central principles of Web 2.0 are freeing and remixing of data so
that virtual applications that draw on data and functionalities from different sources emerge,
participation, work for the user, modularity, the sharing of code, content, and ideas, communication
and the facilitation of community, smart applications, the long tail, and trust. Web 2.0 is a “label
applied to technologies, services and social networks that build upon the Web as a computing platform
rather than merely as a hyperlinked collection of largely static Web pages. In practice, services dubbed
Web 2.0 reflect open standards, decentralized infrastructure, flexibility, simplicity, and, perhaps most
importantly, active user-participation. Examples: blogs, wikis, craigslist.com, del.icio.us, and Flickr“
[31]. The free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia [32] defines Web 2.0 as “a term describing changing
trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and Web design that aims to enhance creativity,
secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the Web“. Peter Simeon Swisher [33]
speaks of Multimedia Asset Management 2.0 (MAM 2.0), which he defines as the “managed Web”
that allows “live collaborations between the publisher and the audience“. It improves the more it is
used and the more open it is: “Under MAM 2.0, open, collaborative models connect media, metadata,
end users and production tools via the Web in fully networked and user-driven ways. [...] It enables
greater collaboration between entire communities of users; content producers and consumers will be
able to learn from each other on a scale previously unimagined“ [33]. Kolbitsch and Maurer [34] argue
that co-operation is central to Web 2.0 in the sense that knowledge would emerge that would be larger
than the sum of all individual knowledge taken together. Tapscott and Williams [35] speak of the new
Web, which they define as “a global, ubiquitous platform for computation and collaboration”, that is
about “communities, participation, and peering.”
Based on these three understandings of Social Software and Web 2.0, we summarize the main
points in the table below (see Table 1).
The three types of understandings discussed so far are not mutually exclusive, there are hybrid
forms creating all combinations. One finds for example definitions of Social Software as platforms for
communication and co-operation: “Social software uses the Web as a collaborative medium that
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allows users to communicate, work together and share and publish their ideas and thoughts – and all
this is done bottom-up and with an extremely high degree of self-organisation“ [36]. Social software
would include wikis, blogs, and social bookmarking. There are also combinations of the features of
public communication and community building, such as “those online-based applications and services
that facilitate information management, identity management, and relationship management by
providing (partial) publics of hypertextual and social networks“ [37]. For Schmidt not all software is
per se Social Software. E-mail, e-governance, and e-commerce would be mainly interpersonal,
whereas tools like blogs, wikis, and social networking platforms would have a public character.
Schmidt considers only the latter as Social Software. Therefore, Social Software would be about
finding, rating, and sharing information (information management), presentation of oneself to others
(identity management), and creating and maintaining social relationships (relationship management).
Table 1. Different understandings of Social Software and Web 2.0 from different
sociological perspectives.
Approach Sociological Theory Meaning of Social Software and
Web 2.0
1 Structural
Theories
Emile Durkheim:
Social facts as fixed and
objectified social structures
that constantly condition social
behaviour.
All computers and the World Wide
Web are social because they are
structures that objectify human
interests, understandings, goals, and
intentions, have certain functions in
society, and effect social behaviour.
2 Social Action
Theories
Max Weber:
Social behaviour as reciprocal
symbolic interaction.
Software on the World Wide Web
that enables communication over
spatio-temporal distances.
3 Theories of
Social Co-
operation
Ferdinand Tönnies:
Communities as social systems
that are based on feelings of
togetherness, mutual
dependence, and values.
Karl Marx:
The social as the co-operation
of many humans that results in
collective goods that should be
owned co-operatively.
Software on the World Wide Web
that enables the social networking
of humans, brings people together
and mediates feelings of virtual
togetherness.
Software on the World Wide Web
that by an architecture of
participation enables the
collaborative production of digital
knowledge that is more than the
sum of individual knowledge, i.e., a
form of collective intelligence.
2.4. An Integrative View of Sociality
It makes sense to develop an integrative view of these three sociality types rather than considering
them separately for the following two reasons: first, the structural, the action, and the co-operation
type of sociality can easily be integrated in the way the Aristotelian genus proximum and differentia
specifica are linked together: Durkheim's notion of the fait social is the most abstract notion. As such it
also applies to actions that – in the sense of Weber – are directed towards other members of society
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and, beyond that, to the production of common goods within a community in the Tönniesian and
Marxian sense.
Defining sociality in the mode, Weber can be seen as making the case for a more concrete and more
particular type of sociality than the Durkheimian one: the latter underlies the former. And the Tönnies–
Marx concept, finally, is still less general and a subcategory of the Weberian one. Thus, they form a
kind of hierarchy, in which the successor is a logical modification of the predecessor: it takes place
under certain constraining conditions.
Second, there is an analogous relationship between the three forms, in which information processes
occur in society: cognition, communication, and co-operation processes. These processes relate to each
other in a way that reflects and resembles the build-up of a complex system. One is the prerequisite for
the other in the following way: in order to co-operate you need to communicate and in order to
communicate you need to cognise.
Therefore, we suggest an integrative view of how sociality is manifested in Social Software. If the
Web is defined as a techno-social system that comprises the social processes of cognition,
communication and cooperation altogether, then the whole Web is Durkheimian, since it is a fait
social. What in the most widespread usage is called Social Software – that is that part of the Web that
realizes communicative as well as cooperative societal roles – is, in addition, social in the Weberian
sense, while it is the community building and collaborative part of the Web that is social only in the
most concrete sense of Tönnies and Marx. To put it in another way: that part of the Web that deals
with cognition only is exclusively Durkheimian without being Weberian, let alone Tönniesian–
Marxian; that part that is about communication including cognition is Weberian and Durkheimian; and
only the third, co-operative, part carries all three meanings. We suggest ascribing the terms Web 1.0,
Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 to these parts accordingly (see Table 2).
Table 2. Integrative and dynamic understanding of Social Software and Web 2.0.
4 An Integrative
and Dynamic
Approach
Emile Durkheim: cognition as
social due to conditioning
external social facts
Max Weber: communicative
action
Ferdinand Tönnies, Karl Marx:
community-building and
collaborative production as
forms of co-operation
The Web as dynamic threefold
knowledge system of human
cognition, communication, and co-
operation:
Web 1.0 as system of human
cognition.
Web 2.0 as system of human
communication.
Web 3.0 as system of human co-
operation.
The Web is a techno-social network that interlinks humans by making use of global networks of
computer networks. Web 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 characterize certain qualities of the Web. Web 1.0 is that
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part of the Web that supports human cognition, Web 2.0 is a system of human communication, Web
3.0 a system of human co-operation.
Most existing definitions of “Social Software” and “Web 2.0” can be grouped together as what we
term “Web 2.0” and “Web 3.0”. Our typology that is connected to three notions of the social (Weber,
Durkheim, Marx/Tönnies) aims at showing that upon discussing social dimensions of the Web, one
should reflect on the basic employed categories and take into account that a term like “sociality” is
complex and has been provided with various meanings within sociology itself. We are aiming at a
more nuanced, complex, and theoretically grounded notion of the Web than what is given by most
existing definitions of “Web 2.0” and “Social Software”.
3. Towards a Theory of the Web
We define the World Wide Web (as the most prominent part of the Internet) as a techno-social
system, a system where humans interact based on technological networks. The notion of the techno-
social system refers to the fact that the Web cannot be defined without connection to the human social
realm. On the one hand, the Web as part of the Internet belongs to the technological infrastructure of
society, which is itself a materialized outcome of social action. On the other hand, the Web is a social
system of mediated cognition, communication, and cooperation, which is based on this infrastructure
as means of its realization. In both cases human agents interact, they act as producers and users. The
Web is the result of these interactions. The human agents are the driving force behind the construction
and reconstruction of this overall system in all of its facets. This logic of a techno-social production
and reproduction can be described as a dialectical relationship between human social agency and its
intended and also its unintended consequences. Emerging from the local level of social interaction, the
consequences of this action constitute a global level of social structure; the latter, in turn, influences
further processes of action as it enables and constrains them at the same time [38]. We speak of
techno-social systems and not of socio-technological systems because in the English language the first
term in a composite term further characterizes the second term, which is considered as the main
characteristic. Therefore, the term socio-technological system stresses primarily technological aspects,
whereas we think that all relations of humans are primarily social and societal. Technological systems
are primarily social systems, technology is a medium that enables and constrains social action. The
term techno-social systems expresses this circumstance better than the term socio-technical system,
which can invoke techno-deterministic meanings. With the Social Construction of Technology
(SCOT) approach we share the critique of technological determinism and that technology is socially
constituted. However, the SCOT approach frequently underestimates the complexity of technology
that can result in unpredictable outcomes and effects of technology and technology usage. We
therefore favour the approach of the mutual shaping of technology and society, in which technology
and society shape each other in complex ways and have a relative autonomy. We see dialectical
sociological theories, such as Giddens’ structuration theory, suited for helping to ground the mutual
shaping approach.
Thus, we do not speak of technologies as something detached from humans, but of systems in
which technologies and humans are mutually connected and produce each other.
Our model of the Web is not a development model, i.e., it does not operate within time and does not
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identify succeeding stages. It provides an analytical separation that allows to distinguish different
techno-social Web systems. We find emergent properties in the model, i.e., Web types that have new
qualities based on qualities of other types, but at the same time go beyond these types. This model is
thus not to be understood as a means of prediction. It is not a scheme of linear progression from one
state to another. It attempts at giving an account of the necessary condition for a next step, which, in
the past, occurred as a contingency and, in the future, might or might not be taken. How is it that Web
2.0 can be interpreted as successor of something called retrospectively Web 1.0 and what are the
possibilities for a Web 3.0 to develop prospectively? This is the question that we want to address. And
the methodology we use to give an answer is to investigate to what extent Web 1.0 can be considered a
necessary condition for Web 2.0 as well as in what respect Web 2.0 may turn out a necessary condition
for Web 3.0. We do so by comparing Web 2.0 with Web 1.0 to find out about identical features and
qualities and about differences between Web 1.0. We are further looking for qualitative differences
within Web 2.0 that might anticipate Web 3.0. Today, the Web is mainly a Web of cognition and
communication. We find certain technologies of co-operation such as wikis, but they still constitute a
minority of the Web. Therefore, we can say that a fully co-operative Web does not yet exist and it is
unclear if it will ever come into existence or not.
In order to be able to make empirical observations, one needs theoretical concepts that can be
applied. We are utilizing a concept of information based on different subprocesses of information that
take place in social life and are technically supported by ICTs. These are cognitive, communicative,
and co-operative processes.
• Cognitive processes (including emotional ones) are individual, or ,in case of any supra-
individual social agency named a subject, intra-subjective processes of generating information.
Human-Computer Interaction as discipline deals with how cognition is being supported and
influenced by using ICTs.
• Communicative processes are interactive, that is, among individuals or other social subjects.
Due to the coupling of cognitive subjects, communicative processes can be understood as
information generation processes. Computer-mediated communication deals with these
processes supported by ICTs
• Cooperative processes are integrative, concern the supra-individual level and let information
emerge from synergetic effects of communicating subjects. Originally, Computer-Supported
Cooperative Work researched this topic from the perspective of the involvement of ICTs.
Nowadays, this approach takes advantage from research in collective intelligence, wisdom of
the crowds and so on.
From these definitions follows that cognition is the necessary condition for communication and
communication the necessary condition for cooperation. In addition, we assume that if one level serves
the function of a necessary condition for the next higher level, then the lower level might be
influenced, shaped, adjusted according to this function by the higher level. Communication emerges
from cognition, co-operation emerges from communication: This means that a subset of cognition
processes forms communication processes and that a subset of communication processes are co-
operation processes. Communication processes are cognition processes with specific, additional
qualities. Co-operation processes are communication processes with specific, additional qualities.
Future Internet 2010, 2
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Therefore, we can categorize Web phenomena according to the dimensions of information
generation. The advantages of distinguishing three forms of information processes on the World Wide
Web are that this allows classifying Web-based technologies, that it allows connecting Internet studies
and sociological theory, that it helps answering the question what is social about the World Wide Web
and World Wide Web usage, that it clarifies what the term information on the World Wide Web means
so that the notion of the World Wide Web as information system becomes clearer and information
science and Internet research can be connected.
Furthermore, since deliberating on Web 3.0 includes technology assessment and design of
technology (“Technikgestaltung”), taking a neutral, value-free stance in identifying the necessary
conditions for the possible future of the Net is not appropriate. We have to take that into consideration,
which is not only possible, but also desirable. This concept makes our approach a critical one. It
includes not only an account of the potential that is given with the actual, but also an evaluation of the
potential, which sorts out the desired. Thus, our philosophy embraces an ascendance from the potential
given now to the actual to be established in the future as well as an ascendance from the less good now
to the better then which altogether yields the Not-Yet in critical theorist Ernst Bloch’s sense [39]. That
is, we criticize the present against the blueprint of a better future. And we do this, after Bloch, by
identifying phenomena hic et nunc and hidden in the present that nevertheless are able to anticipate
and foreshadow a possible better future. This possible better future is cast as vision of a Global
Sustainable Information Society. By that we define a society that, on a planetary scale, is set on a path
of sustainable development by the help of ICTs. That is, we suggest that the overall value be
sustainability that denotes a society’s ability to perpetuate its own development. Complying with
sustainability implies complying with social values like justice, equality, freedom, and solidarity as
well as with sustainability in the ecological and technological sense. These values to be implemented
need, above all, the collaboration of different partitions of humankind, a planetary discourse aimed at
co-operation, and intelligent actors ready for the planetary discourse.
Thus, we can evaluate Web phenomena according to their contribution to processes of how people
can work together, share resources, co-produce, co-act, and engage in activities that benefit all, which
addresses the cooperative dimension, according to the planetary discourse, which addresses the
communicative dimension, and according to the intelligence of actors, which addresses the cognitive
dimension.
Given these presuppositions, we can categorize and evaluate Web phenomena. We do not do
empirical research on our own here, but draw upon generalizations of other works. In particular, we
discuss Benkler [40], Sunstein [41], Lovink [42], Gurstein [43], and Bruns [44].
When addressing eutopian and dystopian views regarding the development of the Net, that is, the
view of virtual communities to revitalize human communal existence and the view of physical
communities being supplanted rather than being supplemented, Yochai Benkler [40] uses the
distinction between strong ties and weak ties, introduced by Mark Granovetter, to summarize empirical
studies on how ICTs strengthen or fragment social relations as follows: strong ties, which relate to
family and local communities, were not weakened, but rather strengthened by the use of ICTs, and
new weak ties were created in addition (see chapter 10). These new weak ties have established what is
known by the terms “communities of practice” and “communities of interest”; they are instrumental
for the individual, but not in the way that they are to become the dominant mode of connecting to other
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people. However, Benkler seems to see an exception from this rule: the emergence of Social Software
and peer-production like with F/OSS or Wikipedia make the group more important than the individual;
they go beyond a community of mere interest in that they “allow the relationship to thicken over time”
[40]. Overall, Benkler’s assessment is rather optimistic.
Cass R. Sunstein [41], who deliberates over how many minds can produce knowledge and avoid
failures, also arrives at a rather positive evaluation of F/OSS and Wikipedia. The following factors
have led to the success of F/OSS: “Many people are willing and able to contribute, sometimes with the
prospect of economic reward, sometimes without any such prospect. It is often easy to see whether
proposed changes are good ones. For open source projects, filters are put in place to protect against
errors. The problems associated with deliberation can be reduced because we are often dealing with
eureka-type problems, where deliberation works well. Open source projects typically combine
deliberation with access to widely dispersed information and creativity” [41]. And Wikipedia
“provides an exceptional opportunity to aggregate the information held by many minds. Wikipedia
itself offers a series of deliberative forums in which disagreements can be explored” [41]. Contrary to
F/OSS and Wikipedia, the blogosphere “offers a stunningly diverse range of claims, perspectives,
rants, insights, lies, facts, falsehood, sense, and nonsense” [41]. Sunstein lists some positive examples,
but they seem to be outweighed by negative ones because the blogosphere “runs into the usual pitfalls
that undermine deliberation, sometimes in heightened forms” [41].
Geert Lovink [42], who sets out to theorize Internet culture, is critical of the blogosphere to an even
greater extent. According to the data he finds, blogs are used primarily as instruments for managing
one’s self, for marketing one’s self, for making P.R. for one’s self. Therefore, he doubts that blogs
belong to groupware or Social Software. They are rather the follow-up generation of the homepage. He
quotes from a blog that writers do not care about whether or not a community forms as a result of their
writing. Blogging, he says, is competing for a maximum of attention. And, we can add, this is true not
only for the blogosphere. Here the similarity to the sphere of so-called Social Software platforms like
Facebook is striking: what counts is being linked. Lovink criticizes the superficiality of content. In
many cases existing information is only reproduced, he bemoans, and no new content is created. At the
same time he admits that blogging, annotating, and building links could be a start for defeating the
indifference. Together with Ned Rossiter he opts for “organized networks” that are useful in strategic
contexts that transcend tactical ones. “Networked multitudes create temporary and voluntary forms of
collaboration that transcend but do not necessary disrupt the Age of Disengagement” [45]. In
organized networks Lovink seems to realize the ideal of free co-operation, in which the result
outperforms the sum of individual performances.
Michael Gurstein [43] distinguishes between networks and communities. While networks are
“structured around the relationships of autonomous and self-directed individual actors (or nodes)
where the basic structuring is of individuals (nodes) interacting with other individuals (nodes) with
linkages between nodes being based on individual choice”, communities “assume collectivity or
communality within a shared framework which may include common values, norms, rules of
behaviour, goals and so on” [43]. He refers to Barry Wellman’s notion of “networked individualism”,
the meaning of which he puts on a level with the meaning of the “Facebook society”. He interprets
Wellman’s networks as externally driven ones that combine fragmented individuals and contrasts it
with “self-initiated (self-organized) and participatory networks, which inter-link individuals not on the
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basis of fragments of identity, but on the basis of self-initiated and self-realized identities. These
networks function as ‘communities’ (whether based on physical or virtual connections) through which
action may be undertaken, projects realized, reality confronted and modified” [43]. “These
communities provide a basis or a foundation element for the construction of an alternative reality”
[43]. Community Informatics then is the way to “provide the means for communities to be enabled and
empowered and to effect action in the world” [43].
Last not least, Axel Bruns [44] who came to call the combined producers and users of collaborative
content creation "produsers" makes use of the notion of communities as opposed to traditional ways of
production. In the introduction to his book, he says that such modes of content-creation "are more
closely aligned with the emergent organizational principles in social communities than with the
predetermined, supposedly optimized rigid structures of governance in the corporate sphere. User-led
content creation in this new model harnesses the collected, collective intelligence of all participants,
and manages – though in some cases better than in others – to direct their contributions to where they
are best able to make a positive impact" [44]. By the notion of collective intelligence, Bruns relates to
philosopher of cyberspace Pierre Levy's ideas.
Now, applying our model to the theoretical findings presented above, we put forth the following
judgment: Web 2.0 is something ambiguous, it oscillates between a positive and a negative
manifestation, and, because of that, it is likely to be transitory.
On the one hand, the usage of terms like “Social Software”, “social media”, “social networking”
aimed at characterizing Web 2.0, seems to typify an euphemistic ideology because the meaning of
“social” blurs the distinction between the interaction of actors and the relationships that emerge from
these interactions and exert a kind of dominance over these interactions, in turn. That people interact
on the Web does not tell us anything about the quality of these interactions and the underlying power
structures. Therefore, discussions of normative and desirable aspects of the Web are needed that avoid
affirmation. Web 2.0 shares with Web 1.0 that it is nowadays instrumental for competition in the
capitalist economy that shapes Internet usage and results in the fact that actors who hold economic or
political power are more visible on the Internet. Thus, it lays emphasis on individuals or individual
organizations being cognized and recognized by other individuals or individual organizations. What
makes Web 2.0 distinct from Web 1.0 is an increase in interaction facilitated by new technological
applications. However, interaction is functional for gaining attention, thus communication serves
cognition instead of the other way round, let alone communication serving cooperation. Bearing in
mind that “communities” are entities belonging to the supra-individual level, so-called “communities
of practice” or “communities of interest”, in which individual actors gather to pursue some practice –
without need to share some interest – or to pursue some personal interest, are instrumental to the
individual actors only and do not qualify for the label of “community”. They represent weak ties that
need not thicken among individual actors that are networked. Social networks reside on the interactive
level, but not on the integrative level. Barry Wellman’s networked individualism seems to be the
predominant characteristic of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is predominantly a Web of competition, not a Web of
co-operation (Web 3.0) that benefits all humans [2].
On the other hand, examples of “communities of action”, true communities that exist in today’s
reality, can be found in cyberspace. An example is Wikipedia, where humans co-operate in order to
produce a world repository of knowledge. Another one is F/OSS, where software is produced for the
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world by means of co-operation. Also online communication and co-operation frequently results in
offline action, as for example the phenomenon of cyberprotest shows. Probably the best example in
this respect is that the movement for alternative globalization co-ordinates most of its protest actions
with the help of the Internet and documents actions on the alternative online news platform Indymedia.
There is a minor faction of blogs devoted to co-operation by helping to bring about a new way of
thinking as an underpinning for political action in a global society. Examples are anti-war blogs. From
a sociological, techno-social-systems point of view, these undertakings in peer production show that
there are possibilities for transcending networked individualism and for realizing “networked
communities” or “community networks”, as Gurstein [43] puts it. But these possibilities are islands of
an alternative reality that point to the level of co-operation, albeit under the prevalence of the
communicative and cognitive restraints of networked individualism and an overall competitive society
that is based on egotism, accumulation, and heteronomy. These islands might become spearheads of a
transition to a Web 3.0 that enables and empowers communities such that a reorganization of today’s
societies into a Global Sustainable Information Society can be envisaged. They might turn out as
anticipations of a future development only after this development happened to come true. So far they
manifest what is possible today and desirable for tomorrow too. The future is open due to the
complexity and indeterminacy of human behaviour. Therefore, potentials are first of all unrealized,
they can remain potentials forever if humans do not consciously act in fundamentally transformative
ways. The negative potentials of the Web that predominate today are likely to be outcomes of the Web
because we live in a predominantly competitive society. Alternative developments are much more
unlikely because they require societal transformations and do not automatically emanate from a Web
that is shaped by the existing society. The emergence of a co-operative Web is not a technological
issue, but one that requires the transformation of society.
Thus, we want to conclude: in principle, the World Wide Web, as the Internet at all, by virtue of its
technical qualities, has the potential for transforming societies into networked communities so that it
can advance from the cognitive and communicative levels of information generation towards the co-
operative level, on which the collective intelligence of humanity might facilitate the collective action
needed for the survival of mankind. Whether or not this will come true and Web 3.0 will look alike, is
up to the forces that shape technology nowadays and will be determined by the outcome of social
struggles that shape techno-social systems.
4. Conclusion
In this paper, we have outlined three qualities of the World Wide Web, namely Web 1.0 as a tool
for thought, Web 2.0 as a medium for human communication and Web 3.0 technologies as networked
digital technologies that support human co-operation.
This means that we distinguish between a cognitive Web, a communicative Web, and a co-
operative Web. The discussion in part 2 of this paper has shown that when people speak of Social
Software or Web 2.0, what they normally mean is that the World Wide Web is today dominated by
communication and co-operation (including community-formation). In order to distinguish between
these two aspects, we have suggested the distinction between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. Hypertext is a
Web 1.0 technology, blogs and Web-based discussion boards are Web 2.0 technologies, wikis are Web
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3.0 technologies. Web 1.0 is based on an understanding of the social as Durkheimian social facts, Web
2.0 adds the Weberian idea of communication, Web 3.0 the Marxian idea of collective co-operative
production and Tönnies’ idea of communities. We have argued that the Marxian and Tönniesian
dimension of co-operation is mainly a mere potential of the contemporary Web. Web 3.0 expands the
understanding of the social from Durkheim and Weber to Tönnies and Marx, it is a system of online
collaboration that enables the formation of virtual communities, co-operative knowledge, and co-
operative labour.
What we argue for is that the turn towards Web 3.0-technologies that foster co-operation should not
only remain a technological turn, as for example the Semantic Web or wikis, but needs to be
accompanied by a transformation towards a fully co-operative society [2]. What is desirable is that the
World Wide Web networks individuals, organizations, institutions, and societies at a global level and
thus provides the glue by which cohesion of the emerging world society can be supported. The Internet
and the World Wide Web provide the material underpinning of the consciousness that is inherent to
the social system that may emerge. Eventually, its role may be that of a catalyst of global
consciousness in a global society. But at the same time, it catalyzes already existing social
antagonisms. The Internet does not automatically bring about co-operative social systems and a co-
operative society. In order to reach a “co-operative society based on common ownership of the means
of production“ [46] in which “the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly” [46], humans
need to actively create co-operative systems that transcend domination. In this context, the Internet can
help to create such change, but at the same time today it also helps to deepen domination. The Web
will become truly co-operative only if humans establish a truly co-operative society in the Tönniesian
and Marxian understanding, in which society and technology mutually shape each other in a
sustainable way.
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