Chapter 7: Platforms for Participation
It took me until the middle of this chapter to figure out exactly what “platforms” are. From what I understand, they provide a foundation upon which collaboration is placed. The main examples used (eBay, Amazon, and Google) don’t really seem like platforms for collaboration to me though. But maybe that’s because I’m looking at this as a consumer, not a developer. Also, the Amazon success story sounds really great, but I feel that capitalism is still at work and collaboration is still an ideal. Was Amazon operating the same way before they were raking in the big bucks? Probably not. I think that once organizations have established themselves as very successful, it’s much easier to participate in novel business practices because they already have financial security.
The People Finder that was formed in the aftermath of Katrina was really inspiring. Normally, the system would have taken a lot of capital to develop. But it is amazing what can get done when it has to. Why aren’t great things like this happening every day? No sense of urgency? People aren’t motivated to things unless they’re going to get something out of it?
As far as government information being available to the public, I think it’s long overdue. I’m not sure what the status of information is now, but I’m sure it’s not where it should be. The area where I have experience is legal research. LexisNexis and Westlaw have taken every statute, every case, etc. from every jurisdiction and organized it all in a way that it is (somewhat) easy to find what you are looking for. You can search by issue, by statute by case, by party name, etc. The catch is that they charge hundreds of dollars per search. (as law students, we get free access to both). Anything that is “public” information should be available (and easily searched) for free.
I just checked out Scorecard and although the data for
2 comments:
I think that the mass collaboration as the authors describe it is a pipedream. Not every company will nave a strategic need for it. I believe it is just another tool. As for Amazon, in our law class we learned Amazon initialy sued companies for copying its one click purchase system. I find the sudden change odd.
Did Amazon really think it would get exclusive rights over the "one click purchase system"? That's crazy. I wonder if they sued over this before they got really big.
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