{"id":385,"date":"2026-09-05T12:54:44","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T19:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/?p=385"},"modified":"2026-09-05T12:59:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T19:59:12","slug":"from-open-to-owned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/from-open-to-owned\/","title":{"rendered":"From Open to Owned"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A reflection on Weller’s Web 2.0 chapter in 25 Years of Ed Tech: <\/em> how the web’s democratic promise gave way to a business model built on data and control, and what that means for ed tech today.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"TV
Note:<\/em> Still from video artwork. Adapted from Television Delivers People<\/em>, by R. Serra, 1973. Whitney Museum. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The 2006 – Web 2.0 chapter of Weller’s 25 Years of Ed Tech<\/em> and the accompanying Between the Chapters<\/em> podcast conversation with Bryan Alexander and Alexandra Pickett cover some ed tech contributions that promised to democratize the web while also quietly building the business model that now defines surveillance capitalism.<\/strong> Two lessons stood out, one immediately relevant, one that conflicts with current practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lesson 1<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n

If you\u2019re not paying for it, then you’re the product.<\/p>\n(Weller, 2020, p. 93)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The web started as one of the most democratic tools ever invented, letting anyone publish and access ideas with no gatekeeper. But the “free” model that powered Web 2.0 carried a hidden cost. Weller’s chapter revisits the idea that when a service is free, the company makes money by collecting your personal data, tracking your habits, and selling your attention to advertisers (Weller, 2020, p. 93). Alexander notes this isn’t new; it goes back to television, and even to 1920s radio before licensing consolidated it (Pasquini, 2021). That pattern keeps repeating: an open medium attracts users, then gets monetized, and sometimes monopolized, by whoever can scale it. With social media, you at least retain some control: Kris Shaffer could delete 40,000 tweets in 2017, even if digital traces remained somewhere she couldn’t fully erase (Shaffer, 2017). With generative AI, our data, be it writing, images, voice, or analytics, is absorbed into training processes we can’t inspect, audit, or meaningfully opt out of after the fact. The “product” relationship hasn’t gone away; it’s gotten less visible and less reversible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lesson:<\/strong> every time a new “free” ed-tech tool shows up, should we be asking ourselves: who is the customer here, and who is the product<\/em>, before asking what the tool can do pedagogically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lesson 2<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n

Small pieces, loosely joined.<\/p>\n(Pasquini, 2021)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In Between the Chapters<\/em>, Pickett describes stitching together NetVibes, blogs, VoiceThread and other third-party online tools outside her Learning Management System (LMS) because she “hated equally every LMS” (Pasquini, 2021). Pickett explains that LMS locked away everything students created once the term ended, whereas she wanted her students to create in the open, on the public web so they could build a real digital footprint and retain ownership of their work. That’s the Web 2.0 ethos: decentralized, student-owned, messy but authentic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That contradiction hasn’t gone away, and if anything, it may have gotten worse. Institutions today are consolidating further, not opening up: locked-down browsers for exams, student analytics, plagiarism and AI-detection tools, and now even AI writing tools, all bundled inside the LMS rather than out on the open web. The justification has shifted from user convenience to safety, privacy, surveillance and compliance, but the effect is the same one Pickett was fighting in 2006: students create inside a system, and then it disappears the moment the course ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We learned from Web 2.0 that free capitalist platforms extract value from users by keeping their data. Institutions responded to that lesson by closing the walls even tighter around students’ own work, rather than by helping students build something that belongs to them and can’t be exploited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lesson: <\/strong>Is locking everything into one platform actually protecting students, or are we just trading exploitation for control?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Pasquini, L. (Host). (2021, February 4). Between the chapters: Web 2.0 [Audio podcast episode]. In 25 years of Ed Tech: The serialized audio version<\/em>. OpenEd. https:\/\/25years.opened.ca\/2021\/02\/06\/between-the-chapters-web-2-0\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shaffer, K. (2017, February 2).\u00a0I deleted 40,000 tweets last week. Here\u2019s why (and how).<\/em>\u00a0Kris Shaffer. https:\/\/kshaffer.github.io\/2017\/02\/i-deleted-tweets\/ <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weller, M. (2020). 25 Years of Ed Tech | Athabasca University Press<\/em>. Aupress.Ca. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.15215\/aupress\/9781771993050.01<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A reflection on Weller’s Web 2.0 chapter in 25 Years of Ed Tech: how the web’s democratic promise gave way to a business model built on data and control, and what that means for ed tech today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":330,"featured_media":389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lrnt523"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/330"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":409,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru314\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}