While Don Tapscott does a good job at explaining why people would colloborate on other open source projects for allturistic or ego-boosting reasons and how an organization can capture value from that interaction I still struggle a bit to see where MIT would gain value by offering their courses for free. It’s not that I don’t think people will come to MIT anymore – people will always want the prestige of an MIT diploma and often feel they learn more from an interactive class environment. The only answer I can get is that MIT sees value in progess. If someone is able to make a break through in a new math proof or understanding of chemical interaction after applying their own knowledge with the Open Courseware then the entire field benefits. That said – they will still not monetize that value as they may have in the past.

I guess it’s the traditional capitalist in me that struggles with certain applications of Open Source. I get the Global Plant Floor, the New Alexandrian industry-university partnership for innovative development and research but these all end in a product from which an organization can capture value – where does MIT capture the value of a non-student taking their courses for free – with no interaction with the institution itself? Are they really just being altruistic and thinking of the greater good or am I missing something here?

He references some comments by Dan Gillmore, a former columnist for The San Jose Mercury News and author of We the Media, and also a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Mr. Gillmore talks about the need for “new forward-thinking approach” which marries traditional journalistic values and Web classes and an entrepreneurial spirit. More and more we hear this sentiment echoing through the journalism community. Just last week I attended a panel discussion with an editor from a major city newspaper and one of the co-founders of Globalpost, a new innovative online international source, who also highlighted the need for journalist to become entrepreneurs in order to survive in the new digital age.

I find it fascinating that so many people are now taking about journalism in the context of an entrepreneurial model. I fully agree that the digital nature of how people get their news will inevitably lead us to this model. I guess my question is how we can effectively maneuver through this period of transition without losing some of the top talent due to their frustration change. I am hoping that the J-Schools are talking about this with students but more importantly the newspaper industry should be thinking about courses to help veteran reporters navigate this difficult time and better understand the new skill set they will have to develop to survive in the new entrepreneurial world of journalism.

The answer is probably yes – yes meaning both happened simultaneously and were mutually reinforcing. People got engaged in the campaign through very successful community outreach efforts but the fact that people could go to the internet and get information regularly, easily donate and remain engaged in the campaign on their own schedule was a critical component to the fund raising. I think we need to be careful to look at the Obama campaign holistically and not be too quick to give all the credit to the internet effort. I also fear that the the bottom line is that the age old saying still stands – bottom line money wins elections.

If we look at the example of Lego Ambassadors, this is a good example of tapping into a very active, long-term purchaser of Legos but this is also a small sub-set of the community. There may be a more effective way to work with this community that could be more cost effective but it would be difficult to dramatically change this program without angering the very active members. If we take the advice of Li/Bernoff what Lego would do is tap into the network itself to find the next generation of social network that would be even more effective with this community but my concern is that often communities may lack the ability to truly innovate and many of the most creative current day online solutions came from agencies and industry experts How do you marry the two effectively? I think the Unilever example is a perfect demonstration of this. I am not sure that a community of Dove users would have identified the Real Beauty opportunity – or been able to put together this complex off-line and on-line program. Perhaps the answer is to have vision and a plan that aligns with the company objectives but to use the Groundswell (customers) to assist in the definition of tactics to execute the strategy?

Maybe I have it wrong and by wearing my corporate hat I am giving too much credit to the agencies and corporate marketing groups but we’ve seen some amazing products from these groups and I don’t think we should lose sight of the potential these groups bring to the table. The groundswell is important so finding the balance between these efforts will be critical.

Have you ever heard the Red Volvo story? In one of my marketing classes in Business School our instructor asked the class if Volvo made their cars in red. No one was sure. What he said was – yes they do and he wanted us to email him in the next few weeks if we saw one. Guess what – we all saw at least one, most of us saw several. The point being you are not always aware of what you see until you are in a heightened state of awareness. Well that happened to me this weekend with 3D printing.

I was walking through the Cambridgeside Galleria and I saw a booth in the food court. There were some post-graduate students from Northeastern University and they had a camera set up that would take your picture and a 3D printer would then create a bust of your head from your picture. Out of curiosity I wanted to do it – but one as a student I am on a limit budget and two having a bust made of myself felt a bit narcissistic. I did talk to the students and got some brochures about the 3D printer. Turns out one example they show is printing customs shoes – a commercial application not one for home (at least not yet) but all that ooohing and ahhhhing in class seems to have been preempted by reality already!! I don’t think I would have realized what technology they were using if we had not just talked about it in class – so thanks to Prof Mele for opening my mind up to a new way of looking at the world of printing and purchasing. There is also a a really interesting article in last October’s issue of Business Week about the coming 3D printing revolution.

The fact that the media is not adapting quickly to the new ways consumers will use their product is nuts! Clearly, things will continue to evolve at a rapid pace and they really need to be rethinking how become part of the Groundswell – or they will get buried underneath it!

If you are interested in learning more about what the students are Northeastern University are doing check out the following links:
ZScanner 700 and ZPrinters

Just as the title implies I am starting to wonder if we have slowed in our progress of new applications for the internet. I was so surprised to read about all the “latest and greatest” applications for the web in the article Web 2.0 and The Cathederal and The Bazaar – both of which were written sometime ago and most of the Web 2.0 concepts were still the one’s the more non-tech savvy people such as myself would consider fairly new.

Admittedly we have made progress in the last few years in optimizing and seeing the real benefits of generating business opportunties at “the tail” with less trafficked sites; and also harnassing the collective intelligence thorugh open source models. The problem for me is that these papers were cutting edge at their time (before we say many of the colleberative web applications take off) but today they seem to summerize the state of affairs. Where are the articles talking about what’s next? These notions can evolve but what is the next paradigm shift – what is Web 3.0? I went on the internet and googled Web 3.0 and nothing very exciting came up. An article about advanced intelligent search and an article about collaborative software development that sounds like some of the open source discussion we’ve been reading about.

The Web 2.0 article talks about applications that work on multiple devices eg. IPOD, IPHONE and Apple Notebook or PC so maybe we should be looking to the mobile device world to be driving the next paradigm shift? I think we are starting to see the new hot apps actually driven by mobile technology – such as Twitter – and we’ll have to see how the mobile devices manage to drive changed in the online world.

While everyone loves a rags (okay not exactly rags for two middle-class Stanford grad students) to riches story and much of the chapters we read this week take us through Google’s journey to superstardom, what I found most interesting about this week’s reading was the chapter on Search, Privacy, Government and Evil. 

Speaking as a person who shreds every piece of mail that comes through my door and also has locks on my file cabinets, I find the notion that significant amounts of my personal information is available on the web terrifying.   The first thing I did after reading this chapter was to find out if my cell phone (which admittedly I have given to a few dodgy guys late in the night at a bar) can be traced to my address.   Good news is that cell phones don’t have quite the same easy tracability to your home address as a home phone number.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that there is a serious large amount of information out there about me.  Can’t someone take that information and maybe open a false credit card accoutnt or somehow get a line of credit in my name?  And what about the numerous times each month I enter my credit card data online, how risky is that?

These thoughts lead me to the ultimate question, where is the balance between convenience and security?  Most of us seem very willing and able to ignore the risk for the sake of convenience.  For people who are world travelers/workers it would be impossible (okay not impossible but really difficult and time consuming) to do their banking, money transfer, maintenance of home or rental properties without online banking and bill pay.  On a more personal note, as someone who is 6 feet tall I love the fact that I can try on a pair of trousers at the Gap, know they fit but are just 3 inches too short, then go home and order those exact trousers in long or tall online.  

So the ability to conduct online transactions has improved my style and image, and the convenience of online bill pay and banking has left me more free time to meet dodgy guys in bars but am I putting my financial health at risk?    Probably not that much considering the security that banks and online transactions sites have put in place.  But the fact that Google is tracking my transactions with every confirmation email I get into my gmail account for my online purchases or the fact that they know the name of my bank because of the monthly statement that comes to my gmail account means that some of my privacy has been handed over from the banks or stores to Google.  I am not as sure I feel quite as safe in their hands, despite their very kitsch company vision of Do No Evil. 

Bottom line I think we all need to make a personal decision between convenience of using the internet in every aspect of our life, knowing Google knows each and every step, and giving up some privacy.  I personally believe the culture of today’s youth is happy to give up privacy in the name of convenience and social networking.  In that case I do believe we all need to be just that more diligent at checking into our credit history regularly or finding out what’s out on the www about us.   This is no longer a vanitygoogle but a rational and pro-active way to ensure our safety and security.

When I showed up for work at that small consulting firm I remember asking for a computer and signing up for services like Dialog and Lexis Nexis to search for information.  It was during the next decade I would come across and use all the sites that Battelle talks about in his book like Excite, Lycos and Altavista.  Hard to believe I was considered cutting edge in my use of technology back then, especially since in the past few years new technology has been launching right under my nose without me even realizing it let alone knowing how to leverage it for work or personal use.  (although thanks to this class I am at least improving on that front a bit)

While the walk down memory lane was fun, what I found most fascinating about Battelle’s introduction was the correlation he makes between the evolution of search technology and cultural understanding.  I had never thought about this before, let alone realized the link between search technology and the notion of artificial intelligence.  All a bit scary and I must admit I remain in complete awe of the profound brain power to create and build out the search technology (says the girl who still doesn’t really understand how algorithms work).  Anyway, I think Battelle is onto something in analyzing the way our social and commercial networks have changed with search. 

Additionally, I think he is dead on about the privacy concerns.  We’ve seen examples of how email is retrieved to put the bad guys away in trials but I don’t think we often consider the use of our emails that transit through  hotmail or gmail.  I sometimes think about the risk of how often I put my personal data, including my credit card data out into the online world but the convenience of online shopping far out ways the risk.  That said, Battelle’s observations about how that data is stored and used are definitely food for thought.  Also, there was a recent article in the New York Times about privacy and the internet – it talked about building a new internet that would sacrifice some of the “open nature” of the internet for more protection of the data we put out there.  If you follow Battelle’s line of thought I am not sure the commercial sector would want this to happen – how else would they know what Japanese teenager’s thought was hot, let alone make the progress needed to make AI a reality.

I also feel somewhat relieved he took the time to delve a bit deeper into some of the issues around truth and copyrights. While these issues may seem mundane and boring to discuss for those most interested in finding a vehicle to globally broadcast their views and opinions, I believe we as a society (especially the “we” who are the new audience / authors / creators of content ) need to carefully consider these issues as we press ahead and find new, un-thought of ways to use the internet for communicating.

I am not as concerned about the “trolls” he refers to in Chapter 9 (these types of people have always existed and attempted to hi-jack discussions through op-eds or other means and there is probably little we can do about their annoying behavior) or the vast number of citizen journalist who do take care and consideration in ensuring the content they publish is the truth. I am referring more to the online authors or bloggers more concerned with being famous than the truth. They often cross the lines of being ethical for their own advantage. There will always be people like Mark Simeon Jakob who will try to scam money from people with fake stock reports, or gossip mavens like Perez Hilton who feed off every little move a celebrity makes, true or not, often leading to unfounded damage to their reputation. What do we do about these people? Gillmor feels our “power to not consume” their material can cut them off at the knees but I don’t really think that is enough. I feel that sometimes legal action is warranted to keep this behavior at bay.

Also, with respect to companies developing copyright protections into their programming I agree with Gillmor that the standards should evolve as technology evolves. However, we need to consider the downside should we allow complete unfettered distribution and use of formally copyrighted material without regard to the damage this does to existing business models. These business models allow the artist, actor, writer, etc to get paid for their work. I believe if we change the business model through online “sharing” we need to think about how they will continue to get paid for their work. I realize this is not the dominate position of the end-user but rather the corporation view but I believe by recognizing this concern we will ensure that experts/editors/A&R talent scouts will be able to bring to our attention the best of the best in the fields of literature, music and movies/TV. Some see existing models as gatekeepers of content, but I personally do not generally have the time or patience to sift through the universe of material out there and appreciate that the current business model.

I may turn out to be wrong and a new business model that addresses these challenges, while creating an even more “open system” may be just around the corner – we can hope!!!

I would have to agree with Gillmor that the old 20^th century model of “big business” journalism or otherwise referred to as the corporate era of journalism where rich and powerful newsmakers controlled the majority of the content that reaches consumers is over. Technology and the recently developed tools such as RSS and SMS have enabled anyone with a computer and basic computer skills to become part of the conversation, and it’s happening in record numbers. He references many good examples of how what is covered is now very much controlled by the consumers including the downfall of Trent Lott after his remarks at Strom Thurmond’s birthday party. This was an event which main stream media choose to downplay but was forced to bring the issue to the front page per se after online users spoke-up loud and clear to voice their concern.

While I do agree with most of Gillmor’s comments there are two areas that I felt he did not explore in depth enough to really understand the potential for good and harm of these new online models. I am specifically referring to his discussion on corporate blogging as an alternative to advertising or static corporate websites and the risk that consumer derived content lacks editorial and often ethical oversight to ensure the content is truthful.

Gillmor is an advocate of corporate executives, specifically the CEO’s of companies, using blogs to give a human face to their company. He cites examples where CEO blogging has lead to improved product design and customer satisfaction. While this may be true of companies with technology products it made me think back to the unsuccessful case of “Tell Shell”. When first launched it pretty much became a “Bash Shell” site. Shell adjusted the format over time and eventually removed the site but reaction to the site raises some valid questions. While this is a discussion forum it demonstrates the risk of how a CEO blog can get hijacked by advocacy groups (and believe me there are many out there that target oil and gas companies) and become a place for complaints, accusations and criticisms on issues that the CEO is not able to discuss for legal reasons. Gillmor is rather glib in his reference to “here come the lawyers” but this is a valid concern for CEOs in many industries (I can imagine this would be the same for tobacco, pharmaceutical, etc).

To my second point Gillmore provides examples that he views as successful in bringing about real change through consumer generated content including OhmyNews. He discusses briefly the new editorial model they used but I wasn’t sure to what extent the editors were involved in ensuring the content was truthful. This example along with some others and his closing remarks in Chapter 6 left me feeling very unsatisfied with an answer to the question how should we address the risk that this consumer generated content posses with respect to “lies” being published. He highlights the need for high ethical standards and the continued need for editorial roles but I don’t see how this will become common practice in a world where people can be anomalous and say whatever they feel and it is considered news.

I am hoping in his subsequent chapters he addresses these risks in more detail.