February 21, 2007

Something Wiki This Way Comes

One of my favorite things to arrive regularly in my email inbox is Knowledge@Wharton, a weekly round-up of mind-expanding information from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and the latest edition is no exception. It includes a story about a new book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, which posits that online collaboration could revolutionize how business is done. From the article:

Today, Wikipedia draws a whopping seven billion page views a month, and has been translated into more than 10 languages. Although the project has received some bad publicity over incidents in which online "vandals" have deliberately posted fake information, many studies have found the accuracy of Wikipedia is similar to the established Encyclopedia Britannica, event though the Internet encyclopedia has roughly 10 times more entries.

The concept was not entirely new, however. The most influential open-source project may still be the Linux computer operating system, which was developed collaboratively by computer scientists beginning in the early 1990s. Today it is used not just by millions of people, but by corporations such as Motorola and BMW. Williams noted that the rise of Wikipedia, Linux -- and other user-generated platforms from online marketplace eBay to MIT's increasingly popular online curriculum -- is no accident, but part of what he calls a "perfect storm" in the growth of the Internet.

The key ingredients in that storm, he said, are the technological advances -- often referred to as "Web 2.0" -- that make online collaboration and communication easier to transact, as well as the arrival of a generation of Internet users that has been born since 1980 and that insists on taking a more active role in creating or editing the online content that it uses.

Williams noted that one of the interviewees for Wikinomics, freelance film editor Josh Peterson, told him that the rapid changes in the Internet reminded him of the history of filmmaking. "He said, 'In the early days of filmmaking, the technology had turned to a point where you didn't actually have to be a technician to make a film, and it was at that point that the torch of creativity passed down from technicians to story tellers. I think you would agree that we have much better films today as a result.'"

You can get Knowledge@Wharton online here.