Just like Doctor Who, the web has regenerated itself into an astonishing creature known as Web 2.0, with some extraordinary characteristics, including network effects, collective intelligence, and perpetual beta.
When you're on safari, and you witness something as extraordinary as a young buffalo being caught by lions, then stolen by crocodiles, taken back by the lions, and finally rescued by the herd of buffalo, you want to have something handy to record it on (as these American tourists did), because no-one is going to believe you when you get home. Then it's easy to post it on YouTube to show your friends, and they can show their friends, and before you know it, it's been viewed 50 million times (not an exaggeration!) Without the power of networking, even with the equipment to record such an event, it would have been practically impossible to reach an audience this size.
When people get together, great things can happen. That is why when you actively invite users to participate, you can come up with something like Wikipedia, a wealth of information from around the world, which in English alone has over three million articles. By the people, for the people, (and hopefully properly referenced)!
Collective Intelligence can also be harnessed by the web to improve itself. Just witness the way Google chooses which of the hundreds, thousands or even millions of search results to put up first: it ranks them according to the amount of attention human users have given each page and links to that page in the past, to predict how relevant the page is.
Social networking sites (such as Facebook) are a good example of perpetual beta; the programmers are constantly changing and updating the layout, capabilities and security in response to the demand of the ever increasing numbers of people using them. This may be of concern to users, who may not even be informed when security systems are changed, and how this alters what is able to be seen by whom. Just how dangerous is it to post information on the web, where theoretically, it could be hacked by anyone from a boss to a complete stranger and used against you? One Facebook user is recruiting volunteers in an attempt to find out.
So what does Doctor Who have to do with all of this? Only that in the 11th doctor's inaugural episode (first broadcast not of television, but on the ABC's internet TV page iView), he saved the world not with a tardis or sonic screwdriver, but with Web 2.0 technology – a computer virus, transmitted via mobile phone, and spread throughout the world via network effects.
References
Battle at Kruger. (2007) In YouTube. Retrieved from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM
Drunk last night? Don't show your boss on Facebook.
(2008, Feb 5). In ABC News. Retrieved from
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02
/05/2154582.htm
Fenwick, P. (2009). Paul Fenwick's Facebook Privacy Study.
In Facebook. Retrieved from
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=145076327240
Moffat, S. (Executive Producer & Head Writer) & Wenger, P.
(Executive Producer). (2009, April). Doctor Who Series 5:
Episode 1: The Eleventh Hour. [Television broadcast]. London:
BBC. (Moffat & Wenger, 2009.) Retrieved from
http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/view/544847
Welcome to Wikipedia. (n.d.) Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
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