Wikinomics Chapter 2

Call me greedy, but I’m having trouble understanding how people benefit from giving stuff away for free. Like the author who publishes “e-books.” How does that pay the bills? One time while traveling, I stumbled upon an author who was doing a book signing for her book (“West of the Equator”) and I was really interested in buying the book because had heard of a different book with the same general story line but from a much earlier time period. I didn’t have any cash on me because I was at the beach, so she just gave me a copy of the book. I read it, enjoyed it, and made my mom read it. Other than that, I haven’t done a lot of promoting. It is kind of similar with the music industry, I think that’s why Sony did what they did in trying to protect cd’s from being copied. But now we have ITunes and similar programs where you can download songs for fairly cheap. Also, MySpace allowing people to put songs on their profiles, is kind of an example of free advertisement and promotion by sharing for free. Personally, when I want to explore new music, I search MySpace music by the genre I’m in the mood for.

About Blogging:

I remember when I used to just look at people’s homepages. But now with the ease of blogging, anyone can put whatever they want out there. I used to think that blogs were all about self-indulgence and that people should just buy a journal or go to therapy. But now, I think that blogs have evolved. I’m ok with blogging with a purpose. For example, browsing people’s travel blogs is a way to get ideas about where and what to visit. In my future travels, I will probably try to do one of my own.

The Net Generation:

Tapscott (author 1) is a Canadian who is around 60 years old. (I found this on Wikipedia). I wonder how he did research about the “Net Geneartion. Is he analyzing from the outside or did he get an inside perspective? Either way, I think he is fairly accurate. I consider myself part of the net generation. I think that the best part is that we have questions and we find a way to answer them. Because we are “skeptical of authority” and “scrutinizers,” it pushes emergence and evolution even faster. Instead of complaining about things we change them. There are positives, but how are we going to run the world? How will our internet and social networking expertise affect the way we run businesses? What happens when we oversee the IT people who make sure employees are not accessing MySpace or Facebook from work computers? It’s a little scary.

Wikinomics-Chapter 1

Wikinomics: Sharing. Starts with the example of the gold company that opened their operation to everyone and they got back accurate guesses as to where the next gold deposits would be found. It sounds good because it worked. But what if it didn’t work? Is that possible or does sharing mean that things are going to improve and going to work? While this process sounds great in theory, I’d be a little hesitant to share a lot of my business for free with the hopes of it growing and getting better. Hopefully this book will convince me otherwise.

Linux is always the example but is that just the techie way of doing things? Look at apple, the first computer, those hippies that didn’t get rich weren’t upset, they were just glad that they were able to be a part of it. I’m skeptical as to the applications of “wikinomics.” In some industries- for example pharmaceuticals- I think it could be great. We need answer to problems and the best way if for everyone to put their heads together…As the book mentions, companies could still stay profitable b/c of patents, etc. But I’m not sure how this type of collaboration would affect competition in other industries.

As far as Web 2.0. I am fascinated. I started using the internet when I was 12 or 13. E-mail was super fun, but only a few of my friends had email. So my other favorite internet past times were checking out people “homepages,” compiling cool quotes, seeing what went on in the chatrooms I was not supposed to be in, and playing music trivia games. I think that what the internet has become now is a compilation of those chat rooms and homepages. They have merged into “social networking” sites. I think Facebook and MySpace, just to name a few, are changing personal relationships and friendships as we know them. In some ways, they’re great tools to sort of keep tabs on old friends and friends that are spread out around the world. The downside is that it is hard to maintain privacy. Back to technology, I think that these sites are, in a way, a response to the advent of new personal devices (blackberries, PDA, iphones, etc.) A lot of times, new technology has efficiency at its root and so it cuts down on face to face time. As a result, people join these communities to still feel as if they’re getting that human interaction and that they still belong.