I found a highly interesting post on broadband geek Om Malik’s blog linking through to a dialogue between him and Niall Kennedy about the coming technologies underpinning Web 2.0.

Being a media guy, more a competent user with strict limits to my abilities and certainly no full-on “Alpha geek”, I am nevertheless hooked when it comes to discussions of the next wave of tools which will shape the web as we know it. In this article (also available as a podcast), despite being in parts deep in the jargon of the age, Niall, with Om playing the straight man with questions and few answers, helps clarify the context some of these tools will be operating in and to some degree how we’ll experience them coming down the path.

Om makes the call that, “… somebody should do a more modest plain English language explainer for all these technologies. Set up a community website where idiots like me can go and learn a little bit more in a simpler manner. That’s when the excitement kicks in. I am interested, I want to do this on my property, but it is so hard to learn. All these languages and everything else… I think that’s what I mean, if you’re going to do the web better, let the democratic web be there. Let the little guys be able to participate. In this, the little guys are the people who have less technical skills compared to you.”

If Om, with his contacts and his highly trafficked site, really still doesn’t have such information readily to hand, where are the rest of us going to start?

How will the little guys get the tools to participate? And while I’m at it, any other suggestions or sources, anyone?