Need for world 2.1

NC1253HZ6. Anyone following Indonesian media regarding world cup prediction should be familiar with this code. Deddy Corbuzier, the name of the mentalist previsioned that the code is the key to open the answer question about world cup winner. It turned out that NC1253HZ6 is his user id in youtube – so that you would be directed to video showing that his announcement that Spain would win world cup three weeks before the match. As I am a person who dont believe in any divination, I thought and browsed on tricks behind it, and voila, found the logical reason behind (you can easily google it to get satisfying answer). What I want to say is what happened after people figured out the trick. Some said that he is just cheater (found many facebook user posted this), then here goes the war (in twitter, especially) between the pros and cons.

Similar situation happened in the last few weeks when three Indonesian national public figures were busted due to their sex tape (no need to mention the name, all of you knew already who persons I referred to here are). Twitter, facebook, blog, media (online or tv based) were totally full of news regardhing this. For some days I never spent a day without reading their names. Same with the former, war happened amongst pros and cons – whether or not they should be sentenced to jail.

However, the moment that I cared the most, and I felt so pity about, was when my university punished one of its students not to study there in 3 semesters for racism (cursing another etnic) in his facebook. Was he making mistake as ITB student? I dont know. It is just too weird for me that ITB punished him because of that. Is UU ITE (law concerning electronic information and transaction) not enough? Why did not the provincial government punish him? Why did not the district government? Why did not head of Kecamatan, Kelurahan, RW, or RT? Guess I am getting sarcastic here. My point here is that, I am not sure that, he deserved punishment that bad for doing something that – undeniably – simple. And it is just, “accidentally” he holds ITB student ID card.

Anyway, those three happened. They are all few examples on the effect of what our world currently evolves into – world 2.0. The term “blabla 2.0″ (blabla here can refer to marketing, learning, education, government, etc) started to popular few years ago, marked with the rise of interactively designed website. When first introduced, website – technology that connects almost two third of world population nowadays – was built purely to give information. We visited web address, got some information, navigated through its link, exposed to more information. These days, web users do more than just retrieve it. They can interactively control data (create, edit, delete) over the websites. Blogs, Wikipedia, social networkings, and many others are few of its application – where knowledge are built by interaction from their users.

Then there went so many new terms based on this principle. Business 2.0 is basically how you develop business ideas by asking opinion from its followers. Learning 2.0 is talking about interaction between students and lecturers. Library 2.0 is about providing books whose content is possibly from the readers. And finally, World 2.0 is about people using technology to find better solution for every aspect of life. How to find the location? Use twitter/4sq. How to find old friends? facebook. How to get job? linkedin or younoodle are good. Playing game? So many online ones out there. And many others example.

Simply enough, people are trying to accomodate more and more aspects in this “new world”. Something we never consider before to be able to do through online, becomes common nowadays. Indeed it has never been a bad idea. However, I put three cases in front to remind about one thing, that probably the improvement of this World 2.0 is fast, way too fast that the habit of the people may not be able to follow. All the examples above, and also perhaps Prita case, show that we are still unsure on what we should (or should not) do regarding one event.

Privacy and confidentiality are also important. Also personal security. And phishing. And so forth – can benefit some of us but will cause great damage or loss to many other people. These danger might not be solved by newer technology or world. In fact, smaller investment can provide better result in overcoming the problem – investment called capacity building. Movement – togetherness – to adapt people to current world so that we can become wiser in using the technology. By doing this we dont have to worry about living in this new world.

I called this World 2.1. Not to change radically on the current system or world. Instead, just improving or upgrading our current world to overcome a little bit bug came with this version. Will write more on the capacity building later, but for now, want to ask you guys a bit on one of the example above – does the ITB student deserve that punishment? why or why not? Would be happy to know your ideas. Cheers!