Bob's name for the social-media phase of electric culture — the "do-it-yourself" web that follows the Web 1.0 "orgy" of the 1990s and makes every user a broadcaster of their own empire. Bob treats it as an inflation engine ("makes everybody a god techne-wise" ), as the pharaonic web where "everybody has their own empire" , and as the peak of the co-anesthetic trend — a stage of the Android Meme on the way to the Anthropomorphic Physical. New to it — start with dialogue 20 for the pharaoh figure.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the inflation engine — Web 2.0 "makes everybody a god techne-wise," a different inflation than the early internet
Bob casts Web 2.0 as an inflation of the self — a techne-driven godhood granted to "anybody," distinct from the way the early internet inflated people, and continuous with McLuhan's discarnate self.
"Web 2.0 does make everybody a god techne-wise."
Given its Egyptian figure — the do-it-yourself web where "everybody has their own empire," each user a pharaoh
Bob gives Web 2.0 its Egyptian figure — the pharaonic self McLuhan named, now literalized as a platform where every user rules "their own empire," the do-it-yourself web as mass pharaoh-making.
"and we're doing that with Web 2.0. Everybody has their own empire."
Named plainly — "I call it Web 2.0," the social-media world
Bob names the period as his own coinage — "Web 2.0," the social-media world, marking it as a distinct phase he uses to date the "new world" of user-made media.
"I call it Web 2.0, social media world."
Dated as the peak of the co-anesthetic trend, documented by a myriad of authors
Bob dates a summit — the co-anesthetic numbing "peaks in Web 2.0," a crest he says a "myriad of authors" have documented even as they missed the decline of the discarnate flood underneath it.
"This trend peaks in Web 2.0 in all the ways documented by a myriad of authors over the last 20 years."
Read as the "super vehicle" that turned everyone into their own broadcaster, feeding the extremes of self-expression
Bob reads Web 2.0 as a "super vehicle" of self-broadcast — everyone a king of their own media, "broadcasters" whose violent self-expression Bob ties to the alt-right turn and the hunger for a return of order.
"You could say Web 2.0 becomes a super vehicle where people were kings of their own media."
Given a definition rather than a date — voluntary ESP named as its condition, which turns the version number into a description of what a user has to do rather than what the network provides
The page-135 sentence the session stops on — 2.0 is not a platform generation but the phase in which participation has to be chosen against the merger.
"Voluntary ESP is the condition of Web 2.0."
He accepts the question as well-posed while declining the answer, which leaves the sentence standing as the series' next problem rather than its conclusion.
"Well, I know what the question is. I don't know what the answer is. I'll be interested to hear."
Connections
Web 2.0 is Bob's name for the social-media phase that succeeds the Web 1.0 "orgy" of the 1990s.
Bob dates the peak of the co-anesthetic trend to Web 2.0 — the numbing that a myriad of authors documented.
In Bob's periodization Web 2.0 is a stage of the Android Meme's unfolding, on the way to the Anthropomorphic Physical.