Exhibit A: The Web 2.0 Video Meme
Exhibit A is an Anthropologist's attempt (using some good video editing and music choice) to nail down what all the Web 2.0 Hype is about (and that we computer dorks all realize is merely a mainstream manifestation of good parts of ole Web "1.0" thinking). It's cropped up on a number of the RSS feeds that I scroll and some interesting reactions have started to precipitate.
One of the things that stands out to me is the Anthropologist's seeming reach out of descriptivism and into prescriptivism with the "Rethink" sequence. I haven't heard many remarks on that sequence, perhaps because it seem more hype(rbole) than substance to most, or because people subconsciously dismiss it as outside of the range of a mostly descriptive work.
I am not a sociologist, but I know people fascinated by them and the analysis of their number magics. One of the interesting things, to me, is that studies (and I'm going to hand-wave here around the fact right now that I don't have any links off the top of my head) are starting to show a growing generation gap in thinking upon many of the things mentioned in the "Rethink" sequence. For instance, the beliefs in Privacy between my generation and my parents' generation have become almost drastically different.
Where Privacy was often considered an almost tangible Right, my generation doesn't see it that way. Privacy is more a matter of Respect and Trust; it isn't a Right to be defended but a Gift, a Kindness, a Boon to be granted and extended and offensively cordoned off with the weapons of Open-Mindedness and Toleration (and Otherness).
Two of the books I usually reference have been provided as Exhibits B and C in the Referenced Works sidebar...