The new prosumer is truly here. Thinking about these words: consumer and prosumer, I can’t help myself—I have to check the latin word roots. Maybe I could make better meaning that way? Well the Latin sumere means to consume and the Latin pro means for or forward. So do I get forward consuming out of this? It seems maybe I do. The Lego example is a perfect example of this. Lego has been working on improving their products long before I amused myself for hours on end trying to build a structurally sound house out of my own Lego bricks. The idea that I now could go on-line and design the house I want to build and a program would design the kit and directions and mail me the kit the next day simply amazes me. Which sort of brings me back full circle to the client I mentioned earlier. Given that a software program exists to create or design just about anything you might want, why would someone hire an architectural planner for a remodeling project when they can buy a program at Office Depot that will do the very same thing—and for a much lower cost. It may even be possible that there is already an open-source platform for architectural design ideas. If there isn’t then therein might lie this client’s only opportunity to reap some success from her business idea of providing architectural remodeling design. Perhaps she could create an open-source platform with drawing tools and design ideas that can be customized to a user’s specifications. Instead she sits at the phone for the individual who just might have accidently found her website to gain new customers who are looking for expensive remodeling advice.
Ultimately, the examples provided make me think of forward-thinking consumers. Those consumers who know better what they want to consume than the organizations that provide the raw goods. While the I-phone had not yet been introduced at the time of publication, Wikinomics makes some very interesting predictions regarding where they say Apple is heading with the Ipod. At the time, an app that was a walking Wikipedia or even web browser was hard to imagine. Today it is common place; with most adults carry a smart phone that offers video texting, web browsing, calendar management and email all in one, not to mention their complete music library. As protective as Apple has been over elements of their IP, they have in fact loosened up a bit in the last couple of years—inviting users to submit their own I-phone applications and allowing them some level of compensation for their IP. In fact, I had lunch with someone just yesterday who had invented an I-phone app. Everyone is doing it.
The same is true with You-tube. What was once a loosely organized group of amateur movies is now the go-to service for on-line video of all types. Unfortunately not every post is meant for good. As evidenced by the recent case of Shirley Sherrod, who suffered at the hands of a right-wing blogger who chose to take her words completely out of context in a malicious manner in order to make a particular political statement. Before the truth came out, Ms. Sherrod was forced to resign and the Secretary of Agriculture was begging her forgiveness. So yes, prosumerism allows us to edit and even create out of whole-cloth news items on the internet, but it can get in the way of the truth, at times with serious consequences. I believe the same to be true of an tangible product as well. To a large degree, allowing the consumer to design their own products and the platform on which they use them does democratize things for the average consumer. But again I ask “Is this all for good, or should we have societal concerns”?
Saturday, August 28, 2010
This Weekend's Reflections
I learned so many different tools for learning, communication, collaborating and sharing in the past 13 class hours than I imagined I would learn in the entire semester. I am excited to try and check out new technologies like polleverywhere.com and use them for certain business applications.
I also have long thought about the idea of sharing my ideas publicly, and with my new blog I am able to do just that.
I myself getting sucked in......
Wikinomics Chapter 4
Now this is interesting. On-line marketplaces where searchers for answers and solvers of problems come together for R&D answers seems almost to be the natural consequence of the dynamics of intrinsically motivated individuals possessing the ability to instantly connect with people and corporations around the world who are themselves in search of new talent and ideas. Working in a field that is fiercely competitive—the broadcast television industry—I try to imagine a world where such an ideagora might exist to, say, develop new programming ideas, research capabilities or promotional opportunities. In 2010 it is hard to envision such a world. I just do not see the general business model of local television stations changing very much. A station might out-source certain types of production, or use barter agreements in order to include strong syndicated programming in their line-up. The local television industry is in many ways a zero-sum game. The number of viewers at a given times of the day and year tend to remain fairly constant; the only way for a station to gain audience is for another station to lose audience as the size of the audience pie never really changes much. The distribution of ad dollars within a market is also a zero-sum game. An advertiser will have only a given budget to spend so for one station to receive a better share of the budget, another station must receive a smaller share. Zero-sum situations do not seem to lend well to open-source sharing!
The advertising industry as a whole, however, frequently out-sources with free-lance writers and producers, not to mention media planners and buyers. It is much easier to envision an InnoCentive type of on-line community in which advertisers could anonymously tap into a broad community of independent providers. But of course they really could not be completely anonymous. It would be a bit difficult to write copy for an unknown product!
This concept of ideagoras does completely change the requirements to develop a small business. High out-of pocket costs have traditionally been a significant barrier to entry for many industries. But what could not be done 10 years ago, is easily done today. In 2010 anyone with an internet connection can operate an on-line business. They can use Linux as their operating system, an on-line ordering system, dramatically reducing the need for employees required for phone-based or brick and mortar businesses, not to mention the ability to operate with little to no inventory costs. Kind of reflects a reality where IP is really just a commodity like anything else. There is a part of me that finds that scary. But I grew up in a world without cell phones or computers. The N generation by contrast has never known a time they didn’t have instant connection to their friends, parents and the internet community at large. They don’t believe in IP the way their parents do. They think music should be available on-line for free not to mention movies, games and other forms of on-line entertainment. This is not a copyright generation. But I believe that because of the deeply-rooted capitalistic animus of corporate America, it will likely be the children of the N generation that best exploit the economic and social advantages of true ideagoras in any given industry.
Wikinomics Chapter Three
Now this is really where the rubber hits the road. Sure it’s interesting that Linus Torvalds brought peer-sharing and collaboration to life, but that was an operating system. Can this idea of peer-sharing really have an impact on the way business is done? Yeah I guess so. When I learned that the BMW I used to drive operated on a Linux system it brought to life the idea that non-monetary based peer collaboration could in fact create its own economy of systems designed to work together with inter-related parts and technical specifications that could result in billions of dollars in industry.
But still, we are talking about something I don’t much understand—the inner workings of my automobile being primary on that list. But then I look at Wikipedia and I see how not only it has changed, but the perception held by most individuals and a growing number of academics have also shifted. Once considered a poor choice for an academic reference—as indicated in Wikinomics, in more recent years Wikipedia has become increasingly accepted as a reputable source of information. Despite its obvious weaknesses, I am a big believer in Wikipedia. I in fact expect to be a contributor one day soon. I am working on my own article on Followership. Wikipedia currently has no entry for this subject and I expect to be the first.
Wow, with peer-sharing I can do what I have always wanted with a minimum of fuss. I don’t need a magazine publisher to be interested in my story; I don’t have to sell it to a newspaper. But it is a subject I believe should be included in the world’s on-line encyclopedia. My opinion is that it is a very important avenue of study as sub-set of leadership studies. You can be sure that Wikipedia has many entries under the subject of Leadership! So I have self-selected to work on a project that has merit and should be studied by more people. I will not likely earn any money, or even recognition. But I will gain value (and find meaning) in the knowledge that a coherent reference for this subject will then exist on Wikipedia! Imagine, little ol’ me, a member of the peer-collaboration world. I can imagine few things that are more exciting for me.
But still, we are talking about something I don’t much understand—the inner workings of my automobile being primary on that list. But then I look at Wikipedia and I see how not only it has changed, but the perception held by most individuals and a growing number of academics have also shifted. Once considered a poor choice for an academic reference—as indicated in Wikinomics, in more recent years Wikipedia has become increasingly accepted as a reputable source of information. Despite its obvious weaknesses, I am a big believer in Wikipedia. I in fact expect to be a contributor one day soon. I am working on my own article on Followership. Wikipedia currently has no entry for this subject and I expect to be the first.
Wow, with peer-sharing I can do what I have always wanted with a minimum of fuss. I don’t need a magazine publisher to be interested in my story; I don’t have to sell it to a newspaper. But it is a subject I believe should be included in the world’s on-line encyclopedia. My opinion is that it is a very important avenue of study as sub-set of leadership studies. You can be sure that Wikipedia has many entries under the subject of Leadership! So I have self-selected to work on a project that has merit and should be studied by more people. I will not likely earn any money, or even recognition. But I will gain value (and find meaning) in the knowledge that a coherent reference for this subject will then exist on Wikipedia! Imagine, little ol’ me, a member of the peer-collaboration world. I can imagine few things that are more exciting for me.
Wikipedia Chapter Two
I must remind myself that some of the information presented in this book is now dated. First published in 2006 and then updated in 2008, the rapid generation of change that has occurred just since 2008 has transformed how we process information. At the time of publication, MySpace was the principal source for social-sharing and networking and even today boasts 66 million users as reported in Wikipedia. But Facebook, which launched 2 years earlier than MySpace, now, boasts 500 million users—also according to Wikipedia.
This is interesting to me because it is only in the past 12 months that I myself created a Facebook page and while it has been fun catching up with old school chums, I lose interest pretty quickly during my rare visits to the site. I find myself not caring much that someone had a dentist appointment or that someone had a bad day. These are things I never felt were fodder for public sharing or explanation. It seems the interactivity of Facebook has created an entirely new universe of “people watchers”. I am amazed at some of the things people will share in the most public of forums. I fear a generation brought up on publicly sharing the innermost details of their lives on the internet. Yet it is happening. I have seen my nieces arguing with each other on Facebook! They were of course in the same house at the time. Is internet communication going to undermine the value of face-to-face communication? And if so, what does that mean for in-person social maturation? I am just wondering.
I am reminded of a client I worked with recently. This client had a website that was simply not searchable on Google. After entering just about every possible combination of words that would describe her business, her business did not appear anywhere in Google. I explained to her that this was a serious problem and would absolutely stand in the way of her success. I then spoke to her of “tags”. Even I, the non-techie, knew what tags were and what they meant to the searchablity of a website. I was amazed that her website developer had not inserted any tags whatsoever in her website and therefore her service, which was very much a niche service, did not appear in a Google search. She is also one who wants to create content, but she wants to be paid for it. I did not explain that this was inconsistent with the business model of most web-based businesses—and in fact antithetical to the entire premise of Web 2.0. and peer-to-peer collaboration. This client is an ideal example of a business that will likely fail due to a lack of understanding of Web 2.0 capabilities. People want interactivity. They are no longer content to sit and stare.
My generation has seen so many changes in how we mass-communicate. As a child, on TV there were only three TV networks. We went from watching the Walton’s to The Brady Bunch to Good Times and The Jeffersons. Fledgling TV networks and independent stations struggled to stay on the air. Then came cable. I was in high school when CNN and Lifetime began providing alternatives to over-the-air television. But still, we sat and we stared. In the early 1990’s came the first real signs of connectivity for the common man via AOL and other internet portals that allowed people to send email to each other and participate in chat groups. But still, for the most part, we sat and we stared.
The sheer immediacy of the clutter we now encounter in our daily lives leaves little time for sitting and staring. The entertainment and communication options now available are so ubiquitous that people generally little patience for sitting and staring. They want to be involved, to contribute, to feel they are part of a larger whole. This world-view demands connectivity, creativity and interactivity. The client I mentioned earlier fails to see this shift and because of that will most likely fail in her business endeavor.
This is interesting to me because it is only in the past 12 months that I myself created a Facebook page and while it has been fun catching up with old school chums, I lose interest pretty quickly during my rare visits to the site. I find myself not caring much that someone had a dentist appointment or that someone had a bad day. These are things I never felt were fodder for public sharing or explanation. It seems the interactivity of Facebook has created an entirely new universe of “people watchers”. I am amazed at some of the things people will share in the most public of forums. I fear a generation brought up on publicly sharing the innermost details of their lives on the internet. Yet it is happening. I have seen my nieces arguing with each other on Facebook! They were of course in the same house at the time. Is internet communication going to undermine the value of face-to-face communication? And if so, what does that mean for in-person social maturation? I am just wondering.
I am reminded of a client I worked with recently. This client had a website that was simply not searchable on Google. After entering just about every possible combination of words that would describe her business, her business did not appear anywhere in Google. I explained to her that this was a serious problem and would absolutely stand in the way of her success. I then spoke to her of “tags”. Even I, the non-techie, knew what tags were and what they meant to the searchablity of a website. I was amazed that her website developer had not inserted any tags whatsoever in her website and therefore her service, which was very much a niche service, did not appear in a Google search. She is also one who wants to create content, but she wants to be paid for it. I did not explain that this was inconsistent with the business model of most web-based businesses—and in fact antithetical to the entire premise of Web 2.0. and peer-to-peer collaboration. This client is an ideal example of a business that will likely fail due to a lack of understanding of Web 2.0 capabilities. People want interactivity. They are no longer content to sit and stare.
My generation has seen so many changes in how we mass-communicate. As a child, on TV there were only three TV networks. We went from watching the Walton’s to The Brady Bunch to Good Times and The Jeffersons. Fledgling TV networks and independent stations struggled to stay on the air. Then came cable. I was in high school when CNN and Lifetime began providing alternatives to over-the-air television. But still, we sat and we stared. In the early 1990’s came the first real signs of connectivity for the common man via AOL and other internet portals that allowed people to send email to each other and participate in chat groups. But still, for the most part, we sat and we stared.
The sheer immediacy of the clutter we now encounter in our daily lives leaves little time for sitting and staring. The entertainment and communication options now available are so ubiquitous that people generally little patience for sitting and staring. They want to be involved, to contribute, to feel they are part of a larger whole. This world-view demands connectivity, creativity and interactivity. The client I mentioned earlier fails to see this shift and because of that will most likely fail in her business endeavor.
Reflections on Wikinomics--Chapter One
I have a tendency at certain times to avoid the unknown. A predisposition in some sense which I see reflected in my fear of the “out there” of this world. I justify myself saying that “surely, I have gotten along thus far without such knowledge, why must I have it now”? In this, I fear most, I am not alone.
In reading the first chapter of Wikinomics, I see my fears of technology; my fear is that I might not understand or lack the ability to grasp the convergence of economic and social concerns that are already changing the world, as I understand it, forever. I think this is good. With the divisiveness that plagues our national discourse these days, it seems to me that encouraging peer collaboration could one day obviate the world views that divide us to such a noteworthy degree.
The sub-title to this book may as well have been “How Everybody is Changing Everything”. I had heard of Linux before, but not being much of a techie, I didn’t really understand the advantages of one operating system over another. I just knew you couldn’t buy a Linux operating system at Office Depot. Learning about the genesis of Linux, my faith in intrinsic motivation is strengthened. Clearly, Linus worked primarily out of intrinsic motivation, rather than from a desire for traditional external rewards, like money, copyrights, and of course recognition from one’s peers. But for many, I think, external rewards have greater awareness and acceptance among contemporary workers, given the long stretch ahead of poor national and local economic forecasts. Clearly though, peer-sharing and mass collaboration tap into mankind’s deeper desire for meaning-making as Maslow posited in the last century or as Pink asserted in his book “Drive” just last year.
That said, the fact that Linux drew so many “peers” to share better solutions and upgrades is, in my opinion, a modern economic marvel. So much of the workforce has had to re-train, re-learn and re-invent in order to compete in an economy that has shifted from a manufacturing based to a knowledge-based platform. But things are changing so quickly in terms of technology that if workers do not continue to re-train and re-invent, they will find themselves considered “un-skilled labor”. But I digress.
Peer collaboration and peer-sharing has had profound effects on the way we gather and store information. Whether a study-group creates a Wikipage so they can all collaborate on a class project, or millions of authors, researchers, and private citizens collaborate to create the world’s most extensive on-line encyclopedia that has now put Encyclopedia Britannica out of business; the prognosis is equally profound.
Further evidence of the remarkable impact of peer-sharing is exemplified by the recently reported development of Wikileaks. This site has gathered an extraordinary level of high-security- clearance documents from the US Government and as allowed public access to all of the nation’s so-called secrets. The question in my mind, “Is this a good thing or not”? If the information is available to the average U.S. citizen, then is it not also available to any terrorist group or country that is other-wise unfriendly to U.S. interests? Wikileaks begs the question “how much is too much transparency?
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