Books on the Virtues and Follies of Internet

A intense back pain has forced me to stay at home this weekend. Since I am bedridden most of the time, I take this time to read intensely or surf the web, as compared to my daily habit of reading one hour before sleep. While I am currently working with founders in web 2.0 start-ups, I am surveying for new ideas from the cyberspace and known literature. So, as a matter of those who are interested in the web 2.0 space, I have decided to recommend two books which illustrate two different perspectives (from the good to the bad) on the phenomenon of the current internet (web 2.0, new media and virtual worlds) and its impact on our culture and economy.

The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen

I have heard of this book from Kevin Lim for some time. It is the anti-thesis of everything that has something good to say about new media and web 2.0. It is reminiscent of a friend of mine who keeps harping that you are not a writer if you blog and refuse to use blogging as a means to promote his writing. This is the problem which I have with some experts. If you want to promote your so-called "quality writing", you must propagate with the help of technology rather than to move away from it. In the end, you end up getting yourself into the rhetoric of why an amateur blogger can sell books better than you. I often think that technology can be a tool to help an individual cause or even the social missions undertaken by people in society.

The central thesis of this book is that the amateurism introduced by blogs (Blogger, Wordpress and Movable Type), videos (YouTube) and wikis (Wikipedia) has eroded our culture towards a dangerous world where the distinction between expert and amateur is being obscured and only the loudest and the extreme dominate in the digital world. Of course, in this book, the author did attempt to tear apart why the wikipedia is not a reliable source of information (given that anyone can edit anything they like) and the economics of the long tail purported by Chris Anderson. I do agree with the author that there is a need for recognized experts' opinion on wikipedia entries instead of allowing an egalitarian approach to specialized information.

Although he spent 90% of the book attacking the prevailing paradigms of the book, he did try to provide some solutions for the future. After all, if you are a critic and offer no solutions, you can only go that far. He cited Larry Sanger's Citizendium (note that Larry Sanger is also a co-founder of Wikipedia) as the hybrid model that adopts the assumption that combines the public participation with expert guidance. In Citizendium, the experts in specific subjects will review, approve and settle disputes about articles within their specialist domain of knowledge. Of course, it is also reinforced with moderators, maintaining law and order against anarchists, pseudo-intellectuals, cyber gangsters and trolls. Following with other examples from Joost and Huffington Post, Andrew Keen is proposing the fusion of both the participatory nature of web 2.0 and leveraging on the specialists and experts in the domains. In some sense, there is a movement going in that direction, for example, Assignment Zero, which utilizes the citizen journalists to gather news and reports under an established editorial board from the mainstream media.

Check out Andrew Keen's speech in Google above.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration changes everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

Now I move to another view, which celebrates why mass collaboration has enabled the world to achieve many things within a short span of time. In Wikinomics, the authors focus on four key principles of being open, peering, sharing and acting globally. For example, in the realm of being open, the authors argue with examples from the IT industry, how standards are created by utilizing the development of open source software and encourage a diverse range of open software platforms (for example, Linux for operating systems, MySQL for databases, Firefox for browsers). Being open also allow people to see the true value of products better and facilitate someone from a faraway place to innovate based on the information available. If that is achieved, the world is truly flat.

In Wikinomics, the authors stressed a positive outcome of mass collaboration and used the human genome project and  linux as examples of successful scientific projects achieved by mass collaboration. They also invoked the term "pro-sumers" where the customers take an active role to be part of the innovation process with the technology companies for the type of products that they want. The pro-sumers are now part of the cycle for continuous innovation and dictate what the features of the product they truly want. Unlike Andrew Keen, the authors take an optimistic view of the wikipedia, and stressed that Jimmy Wales is treading lightly in implementing top down controls for wikipedia, that might kill off the energy of the community spirit for mass collaboration.

One focus in this book is to look at how mass collaboration can add business value for the corporations. In the book, the authors suggest some design principles which can assist the business leaders to extract more value. They proposed that the leaders should (i) take cues from the lead users (e.g. Flickr), (ii) building the critical mass of users, (iii) supplying the infrastructure for collaboration (e.g. the wiki platform),  (iv) taking the time to get the structures and governance right, (v) abide by community norms, (vi) let the process evolve and finally (iv) hone the collaborative mind. In a different manner, they seem to move the reader towards a more positive impression of the current web 2.0 or new media culture in the internet.

So, who's right or wrong?

Of course, after reading different books and the experience of interacting and immersing in the web 2.0 world, who do we trust? While we are now seeing a constant move towards integration between the old and new (or social) media, the amateur culture which Andrew Keen is purporting that is destroying our economy and the reliability of knowledge, is also under challenge. While we should still trust the experts in what they know, we also need to extract the energy of a passionate group of users out there. In both worlds, they are also learning to compromise. The experts are beginning to roll their sleeves up and start blogging, video-blogging and also create wikis while the amateurs are starting to get their act to ensure the quality of information.

Other than openness and mass collaboration, Andrew Keen did not also realize that trust and credibility are now part of the foundation that build up the social media. Social capital is an important facet of new media, and people are also learning to be skeptical and critical about information. However, there must be more effort in that direction.

The answer, of course, is not right and wrong, but somewhere in the middle, as the authors of these books have captured a certain facet of the brave new world we are in.

Comments

[priscilla]

I am now reading the cult of the amateur. it is interesting to be reading Wikinomics which is one extreme and the cult at the other end of the argument. I totally love The Cult of the Amateur.

Interesting that we are reading similar books! Keep sharing your reads!

[Bitbot]

Hey Bernie, didn't know you were ill! Sounds pretty serious too, hope you get well soon.

Getting back onto the topic, another book you might want to add (but not sure whether you've blogged about before this) is The World Is Flat. It writes about how the internet and web2.0 is "flattening" the world and changing the way companies and people work with an emphasis on outsourcing.

[Priscilla Tan]

I am reading Wikinomics now too!

Hope you are feeling better. catch up again soon.