28.03.07 a short review of a book i haven’t read
I’ve been mildly interested in the book Wikinomics recently, because it’s one of the sexy recent non-fictions to appear on my radar, and I’m obsessed with Wikipedia (well, who isn’t). But mildly interested means I haven’t really yet bothered to find out what it’s about.
But this morning I saw an interview with the author, and he basically explained that the book is about how the web will not only promote information exchange, but also collaboration (yawn). What really caught my attention, however, was a very compelling real-life example he used (details very approximate):
His neighbor owned a gold mining company, that didn’t really have a good way of finding the gold on its territories, and he was about to fold it. He decided as a last-ditch effort to share all the geological information he had about his lands on the net, and hold a contest to see if geologists around the world could use the data to find where the gold was. The prize for finding the gold was 500,000$. The contest entrants, using all sorts of methods he was unaware of, found 34 billion dollars worth of gold on his lands. Not a bad return on investment.
The bottom line is, outsourcing to the masses out there may be a very good way of creating value (Wikipedia and Linux are obvious examples). And there’s nothing yawnworthy about that.
I went to work happily thinking about the possibilities of harnessing this and how I could participate in it. Then, a few hours later, a complete stranger wrote to tell me she was writing a story about how San Francisco was banning grocery bags, and could she use one of my photos in her story. Guess she thought of a way for me.
Interestingly enough, and the topic is, I do believe that collaboration is something that got lost in the corporate-ideology-laden, post-industrial mindsets of the past century. However, sharing information (as it can be loosely described in the vernacular), is the concept that was lost and is being rediscovered.
You may call it outsourcing, or wikinomics, but I do believe people create value in a compound-interest kind of way when the value is re-inserted into society (yeah pretty much open source preaching there) instead of being stripped away from it and kept in some virtual vault somewhere.
The trickle-down effect works as a great descriptor in both cases, whether it is observed in a system where things are being stripped away, or whether that system is one where things are being added to.
And, since I love to hate clichés, it all comes out in the wash.
I knew Comet was going to become a star on San Francisco’s dog-walk.
My copy just arrived from amazon today. I’ll let you know what I think of it.
I love that photo! Comet looks like she has a look of disapproval on her face. Love it.
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