Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams is another book about how future online trends are affecting even our in-person lives. For those of you web 2.0 and technology experts, like me, you probably won’t find much new information. However, I really enjoyed the section on the history of Wikipedia (one of my favorite sites in the whole world) and some of the difficulties they face in managing an online encyclopedia where anyone can go in and edit entries. It focuses on the principles of Wikinomics (”wiki” is collaborative software), which are being open, peering, sharing and thinking globally. These are all good things in my book, but often at odds with corporate America. (The lawyer in me still cringes at the thought of open-source software!)
The only problem with the book is that it was published in December 2006, which means – due to the slow publishing business – that most of the data was from 2004/2005 – almost a lifetime ago in online businesses. This meant that they were talking about behemoths like myspace, etc. as small little startups. Can’t recall if YouTube even got a mention.
The Bottom Line: Not a top favorite of mine, however, it’s a good overview of how “wiki” technology is affecting (and will affect) how you and I do business. So, if you don’t know “what the wiki I’m talking about,” you might want to check it out.
This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
