More than gaining any insight from the readings, I was most surprised by the range of affect that each article provided.  There is a faint sense of dread in the Marshall chapters.  I don’t think you can quote Foucault without infecting whatever you are writing with small bit of existential doom.  Shirky, on the other hand was refreshing.  His article on the creative and productive potential of new media did not have the wide-eyed naivete that make many pro-media writings seem trite.

After reading the Anderson article, I had to wonder if participation by algorithm is fundamentally different than direct participation since it is user participation that generates the results of the algorithms in the first place.  Ultimately, Anderson, like Marshall leads me to ask, what’s the big deal?  What do they seem so afraid of?

Blank and Reisdorf seemed to have a skewed perspective.  While briefly acknowledging that maybe some people just don’t need Web 2.0, they were much more instant that people who did not use Web 2.0 are some kind of luddites.  But I also thought their claim to do what other authors have failed to do was a bit pretentious, not to mention disappointing when I actually read their definition of Web 2.0.