The journalist Will Hutton includes Web 2.0 in his list of five ideas that he believes have moved humanity forward in 2006. "A new architecture is emerging, which allows people to connect with each other in revolutionary ways. Hence blogging or YouTube, where users post and exchange videos they have taken themselves. The mushrooming of participative and enabling sites such as MySpace, Wikipedia, Skype, Flickr, Facebook, Second Life and so on are all part of the same trend.This is but the precursor of Web 3.0, when the architecture will become yet more sophisticated. Search engines will no longer list data; they will answer your questions. Web 3.0 will mean that the web becomes a permanent part of our consciousness, conversation and cognition. Ultimately, a chip in our brain will connect us in real time to the entire web, adding immeasurably to the power of memory." (24/12/2006)

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"Everybody is an author: this is how the spirit of this new web community, this new era known as Web 2.0 is being summed up", notes the journalist Nicolas Arpagian, pondering the emergence of a new economic model. "After the slogan 'Everybody is a journalist', popularised by the arrival of blogs, are we going to see the generalisation of a new social category: part-time creators ? They will have a paid job to ensure their life style and at the same time they will be the manufacturers of contents. ... It is perhaps from this Web 2.0 that the intellectual ebullition will come, ever so sought-after by modern economies. ... Imagination, reactivity and endurance - necessary qualities for all authors on the web - can be nothing but beneficial in economic life. And thus this free creativity is being called upon to become a productive source of richness in its own right." (27/12/2006)

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Dirk Nolde points out that since the beginning of 2006, companies have been making billions out of Web 2.0. "But in actual fact there are many who have not yet caught up with the information age, even in the year 2006, and even in America... And of those who are online, only a few are actively participating. They could. That's what Web 2.0 is there for. But they don't. ... On average only one in every 100 users registered with Yahoo Groups makes use of the service allowing users to set up their own debate club. The rest just read what the others write... From a financial point of view it doesn't make much of a difference. Those who just look count just as much as those who create because most of the money Web 2.0 generates is through advertising. The profit depends on how often a certain page is called up, or in other words, on how many people see the advertisement. ... The amount of money that can be made this way here and now is impressive. A video constantly runs on the YouTube startup page – a paid advertisement. YouTube sells the advertising space in the upper right corner for 175,000 dollars per day." (27/12/2006)

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According to columnist Peter Filzmaier, the Internet, which is supposedly accessible to all, is not doing much for democracy or politics. He points out that the vision of "online forums as neo-Agora" has turned out to be an illusion, and explains why. "The traditional parties are using massive web campaigns and providing false information given under false identities to manipulate social movements... There is a modern class society consisting of a majority of internet consumers who are mostly 'unqualified' and a minority of highly competent users. Only the latter can use the Internet consistently for political education, political activities and political participation. The rest just gets bread and games." (27/12/2006)

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"The theme of the end of work, or more precisely the end of work as a main source of income, no doubt has quite a future ahead of it", reveals the economic chronicler Marian Stepczynski. "Between free work Jeremy Rifkin-style (voluntary work, New Work) and the economy of gratuitousness as suggested by Jacques Attali, there is room for all sorts of sharing. .... There is nothing to stop us from thinking that the forms of work that belong to our ageing societies will not be the same as those we are used to. The return to a more local economy - paradoxically favoured by the web and the globalisation of exchanges - could for example lead to renewed forms of mutual-aid between generations, adults helping the aged, the aged looking after children, the healthy looking after the ill, within demonetarised circuits of exchange." (27/12/2006)

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In a lengthy interview with Jan Feddersen and Susanne Lang about Christmas, God and the world, the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk explains that he does not see a return to religion as the path to peace of mind or to salvation. "The religions continue to belong to the problem rather than the solution. Were such a thing as a world spirit to exist, it would now come out and say: the only way still open is the way of civilisation. For on the world's stage two complexes are facing one another: one is the unbalanced over-eroticised greed of the ravaged West, the other, equally unbalanced is the fanatical Middle East, devastated by resentment. If the balance is not redressed all round, global self-destruction is unavoidable." (23/12/2006)

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The Belgian artist Johan Muyle, who recently exhibited at the B.P.S 22 gallery in Charleroi, shares, in an interview with Guy Duplat, his vision of French-speaking Belgium. "I repeat that I feel empathy towards the community among which I live, but I regret that it does not reveal itself to the public eye, that it thus lacks the courage to admit that it is multiracial and multicultural. That, however, is the future of the world and, for a big town such as Liège, if it wants to keep that status, it should count on the contribution of its new actors. When I was young, the son of Flemish immigrants, friend of Italian and Greek immigrants, we were united by the French language. And it is not the poster campaign on famous French-speaking Belgians, stupidly copied by 'Bekende Vlamingen' [Famous Flemish] that is going to change anything. I would rather our ministers look more towards what is being done in Milan or Bilbao". (27/12/2006)

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A few days away from the entrance of Bulgaria and Romania into the European Union, on January 1st, the daily reminds us that "Sofia and Bucharest narrowly escaped the carving knife of the EU, that has just decided to delay any other accession for as long as it does not receive the institutional and financial means to reinforce its 'integration capacity'. For Sofia and Bucharest, what counted was to get into the club. But this entrance is taking place under surveillance. Both countries are going to have to double their efforts to completely fulfil the Union's criteria. The EU's wager is to show, by cautiously integrating Bulgaria and Romania, that enlargement remains under its control and is not running ahead of itself. Though it has just been slowed down, the general strategy is not being put into question: enlargement continues to appear a motor for growth and an instrument of stability." (27/12/2006)

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Russia wants to increase the price Belarus pays for its gas and is threatening to cut off supplies if President Lukashenko doesn't agree. The newspaper's Moscow correspondents Ignacy Morawski and Andrzej Pisalnik comment that despite Gazprom's reassurances to the contrary the dispute could threaten gas supplies to Europe as a whole. "The negotiations between the government in Minsk and Gazprom have broken down... Although the powers that be in Moscow have promised that they will do everything possible to make sure that supplies to Europe are not affected even if they do cut off Belarus's supplies, the experts don't believe these promises." The two journalists point to what happened the last time Moscow tried to put up the gas prices for Belarus early in 2004. Belarus stockpiled its gas and "the result was that Poland and other EU states suffered shortages." (27/12/2006)

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Serbia will hold parliamentary elections on January 21. József Makai writes that the country's isolation is fuelling Serb nationalism and calls on the EU to loosen restrictions for Serb citizens travelling to the EU. "The Schengen Agreement is sealing Serbia off from the rest of the world and this has many negative repercussions. It's not surprising that the Serb Radical Party, which wants the formation of a greater Serbia, is now the strongest political force in the country. How could it be otherwise ? In Serbia a generation that has no memory of how things were before the war will be voting for the first time. Up to now their lives have been dominated by a succession of crises and wars. Massive smear campaigns are part of their everyday life. Two-thirds of Serbia's students have never been abroad... It's not enough to give Serbia the prospect of EU membership in the long term. Personal contact with the outside world would make them warm to it much more quickly than the democratic government." (26/12/2006)

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The long wait for a new government has been the topic of the year for the Czechs. For seven months now politicians have been trying without success to create a cabinet capable of governing the country. Robert Brestan comments ironically: "St. Nicholas' Day and Christmas, the deadlines last mentioned, have passed and still we have no government. The Czechs are still breaking all records. There is not another country in the world in which the formation of a government has taken so long. The foreign media is saying that the country has been driving on auto-pilot for the last six months... The economy is doing well even without a government, the currency is getting stronger and the share prices are stable. However, the necessary reforms of the country's pension system, social welfare services and its healthcare system require a government that has a parliamentary majority." (27/12/2006)

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The conservative daily is concerned by the "lack of transparency" in the implantation of new mosques in Spain. "Places of Muslim worship and union are multiplying in several Spanish towns. Their financing should be submitted to exactly the same rules as all other Spanish establishments. The law should make sure that the money used to finance these places of worship be legally transferred and ensure that the freedom of worship, which no one is contesting for Muslims, does not serve as an excuse for uncontrolled infiltration of terrorist doctrines and the transformation of mosques into bases for radical jihads. ... The fact that there exist 200 illegal mosques in Andalusia, alongside 83 officially registered, can only feed suspicion and favour a dangerous clandestine climate." (27/12/2006)

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The daily dedicates its front page to the issue of slave labour in the UK. "What do we mean by slaves ?" explains Aidan McQuay, director of the charity Anti-Slavery International. "Anyone who is forced to work through coercion or deception, for little or no pay, and who is controlled by an 'employer', usually through mental or physical abuse or threats. The International Labour Organisation estimates that there are at least 360,000 people living in slavery in industrialised countries. Two-thirds have been coerced into forced labour by people traffickers in a worldwide industry worth at least $32bn a year. ... There are thought to be thousands of people in Britain who are slaves today. ... Most mystifyingly, the Government still has not signed the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, which would ensure that people trafficked into forced labour are provided with minimum standards of protection and support. More than 30 other European countries have signed." (27/12/2006)

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The daily notes that 2006 marked a return of realism and "militant works", notably in the theatre. "To snore like the blessed actor in is his dressing room. When reality in all its fury monopolises the stage, such rest is liable for martial court. Granted, this is an exaggeration. But in 2006, artists really did deprive us of sleep well after the lights went down", notes the chronicler Alexander Demidoff. "It has been one of the great roles of the theatre, ever since agit-prop in the 1920s. At the time, in the Soviet Union, actors broached red-hot subjects in the factories. Meanwhile, in Germany, the young Brecht wanted to give workers food for thought. These pioneers have children, some followers of documentary theatre, others of fictional-truth." The latter "has in Edward Bond a remorseless master. Since the 1970s, this great English author has been denouncing the worst of the human condition. He struck once again in Avignon last July." (27/12/2006)

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All available articles from » Alexandre Demidoff

Hungary's MEPs can seldom agree on anything but just before Christmas they agreed on a joint demand: if the euro is introduced in Hungary it should be written with a Hungarian accent and be called the 'euró'. The newspaper's Brussels correspondent László Szőcs comments. "As far as its budget deficit is concerned Hungary is certainly not a model EU country. It hasn't been able to meet a single criterion for the introduction of the euro so far. But when it comes to how the word euro should be written the Hungarians are very determined. Brussels wants Hungary to end the disputes in its internal politics and get its economy back on track. What better way to do this than by putting a long 'o' at the end of the word 'euro' ?... The common currency symbolises a united Europe. The notes and coins make the EU tangible. This is why what is written on these notes is important." (23/12/2006)

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