We've established that there is a prophecy for web 2.0, and we've taken a look at the hero who is destined to be the One who makes the prophecy come true.

The only thing stopping the hero in this myth is the same force that stops the hero in any myth: the villian.




So, the question: who is the villian that the blogger -- the hero of web 2.0 -- faces? And what will the hero need to do to win the battle and make the prophecy come true?

Think back to the prophecy, for in it is the clue as to who the enemy is. The prophecy:

The disruption of the property rights economy will come as a peer-produced reconstruction of the edge.

The force to be disrupted is the property rights economy. They are the enemy who imposes tyranny upon us, the villian seeking to restrict our ability to reconstruct the web into a meaningful message. By preventing us from giving meaning to life, they imprison us in a world without meaning, void of purpose; for as Joseph Campbell said, the meaning of life is whatever meaning you give it. They, those insistent upon allowing the property rights economy to dominate our world, are doing what villians always do: attempting to to stop us from becoming the heroes we are destined to be.

So, the question: how do we win this battle?

The same way the underdog always wins: by uniting. We use our intellectual property to unite and build communities; to create relationships and identities that lead to the trust needed to make sales; to exchange our intellectual property for the attention, personal information, and trust of the customer, which in turn will allow us to create an infomediary business model.

They use their intellectual property to divide and conquer us.

This time, though, it's not going to work. Because their tricks don't work here in web 2.0, the Inverse Universe.

Look, it boils down to this: we know the Internet is a winner-take-(almost)-all type of ecosystem; such is a basic characteristic of networks. Amazing things happen when you start connecting the pieces.

And that sentiment is what will be at the heart of the battle for the future of the web. The real winner of web 2.0 will be a community-based blog network that fulfills the prophecy and creates the right infomediary business model.

That, my friends, is the myth. There is only one thing left: making the myth real.

That is not as difficult as the odds, as forecasted by "experts," may seem. It only really requires thing: belief. Because, as Orwell said, the myths that are believed in tend to become true.

***EDIT: In light of the comment from Brian Clark below, the word anti-hero has been edited out of this post. Thank you, Brian, for sharing the truth with us, and freeing us from the false reality of misinformation!

Articles in This Series

The Prophecy
The Hero.
The Battle.