It's been five years now that we've begun to understand what Web 2.0 is, starting way back in 2003. It's been a fairly impressive if winding road as a new online generation was born. But far from getting long in the tooth, along the way Web 2.0 became vitally important — even central in some cases — to the very future of global culture and business. Oh certainly, sometimes we get tired of the term itself, and admittedly it doesn't describe something necessarily new anymore, but what we just do these days. But the concepts identified as Web 2.0 have proved to be highly insightful, even prescient, and are used around the world daily to guide everything from product development to the future of government.