Yes, Web 2.0 empowers the user. Just read “A Day in the Life of Web 2.0.”* However, the Internet user has been empowered for a decade now, right? Newer technologies, including web applications, certainly ease the entry of wannabe-geeks (like me) into the web. Perhaps increased desire for involvement by non-IT folks (like me) is driving the changes being labeled as web2.0. One account of Internet history indicates 1995 as the year AOL began. Another places the birth of Yahoo! in 1994. These events—the creation of easy-to-use, consumer portals—represent a node of popularization for the Internet.

The idea really began to catch on.

That the cultural popularity of the web dawned over a decade ago might suggest that the Internet has had plenty of time to mature. But, there is evidence that the Internet is just beginning to find itself.

Given the rapid and sustained pace of innovation in the underlying technology, the rapid growth of usage, the continuing shift of spending to the Internet and the proliferation of new businesses created on the Internet, I find it hard to characterize this space as “maturing” – my sense is that it is still in its infancy.
— from Edge Perspectives with John Hagel

The Internet was created to share information. Now, information is not only more accessible, it is more properly filtered and sorted (see RSS).

The change and evolution of this medium fascinates me.

Now, if I can just find a way to perform a secondary filter on the RSS feeds within Google Reader, so that sites like Stephen’s web—occasionally feeding dozens of links—are not so unwieldy…

* For a detailed, authoritative article discussing web2.0, see this article by Tim O’Reilly.