A comic book in grad school?
On Monday night, when my husband knew I was reading for school, he saw me reading Bound by Law and said, “Are you reading a comic book?� with a raised eyebrow. And before I started reading it, I kind of looked at it with a raised eyebrow too. But that didn’t last too long because it was so quick to read and had so much good information—especially since I consider our website to be a kind of documentary. And the part in “The Prosumers� about mash-ups and remixing music made me think about how I created the chronology page. I used so many bits and pieces and snippets of info from here and there—no direct quotes—but now I wonder if I violated any copyright laws or if it is fair use. Good thing it isn’t published yet.
I’m assuming we will be using one or more of the licenses found at Creative Commons, but I’m wondering if the license applies to the entire site or can individual page owners choose different conditions? I vote for Attribution and Non-commercial, but am more than willing to listen to arguments for other options. Anyway, I think Creative Commons is a genius idea—I’m going to start looking for licenses on web pages now. Has anyone ever spotted one?
On to Wikinomics…One of the things I really like about Wikinomics is the real life examples the authors use in their writing, such as the London bombing Wikipedia entry (65), the IBM open sourcing story (77-82), Legos Mindstorms (130-131), Apple/iPod (132-134), etc. And I think Matt Barton’s idea of using Wikipedia to create a “living, breathing resource on English rhetoric, its history, uses, and meaning� (74) is brilliant—what a great way to get what he personally wants online with minimal effort. Looks like the phrase “nature abhors a vacuum� applies to Wikipedia.
I’ve always been a little leery of using Wikipedia as a research resource, so I usually just use it as a starting point to get additional references. But reading about it in “The Peer Pioneers� chapter and how its peer collaboration works gives me more confidence in the quality and veracity of its information. It was reassuring to see that the Encyclopedia Britannica was found to have a similar number of errors (Wikinomics, 75). What isn’t reassuring is that while the Wikipedia errors could be fixed quickly, the Britannica errors were not. One of the drawbacks of paper publishing.
I think “The Prosumers� chapter was the most interesting of this week’s Wikinomics readings. There seems to be a fine and unhappy line between what companies (and the music industry) want to allow and what consumers want to do with what they buy. Big business forgets that when someone buys something, they consider that item to be theirs to do with as they please. I remember reading about people who lost their iPhone hacks when they got a software upgrade—they were furious because they had made the phone how they wanted it and they lost everything, including the ability to use a phone company besides AT&T. Companies need to wake up: “In the new prosumer-centric paradigm, customers want a genuine role in designing the products of the future. It’s just that they will do it on their own terms, in their own networks, and for their own ends. In fact, they will do so increasingly without you knowing about it. Products that don’t enable and invite customer participation will be anathema—staid, old-fashioned remnants of a less customer-friendly era� (Wikinomics, 149).
Aside 1—"The Prosumers" chapter was obviously written before the iPhone was launched. I laughed when I read this: “Analysts speculate that Apple may use upcoming generations of the iPod to move into the mobile phone market as well� (134). Mission accomplished.
Aside 2—I also had a couple ah-ha moments this week while reading…like how the Linux open source communities work (and that there are many communities) and how companies/people make money using open source information. Two mini mysteries solved.
Comments
Just wanted to add that my regard for Wikipedia rose after reading the Wikinomics chapter this week, too. I have been told that it isn't a reliable source, particularly for academic work. Nonetheless, I use it more and more like you do, as a starting place, for research and more conventional sources of information. I am now, however, truly in awe of the principle of it. Have humans ever invented anything else so cool?
In reflecting on the chapter about prosumers, it makes me wonder whether the ability of consumers to participate is changing how we lot's of over things too , like deliver services. It's very common that my clients want a very high degree of involvement in design projects. There's more than one reason for this but I've never considered the fact that we can have more control over everything we buy now...
Posted by: Sara McDonnell | March 30, 2008 6:41 PM