Oct 5, 2009

Wikinomics and hyperbole

Wikinomics Wikinomics by Dan Tapscott

If you have any familiarity with Web2.0 platforms maybe you should write your own book so that the hyperbole packaged by Dan Tapscott is bought back down to earth.

This is a fantastical journey that promises you that the Web 2.0 universe is the very best thing since sliced bread and it will tell you that over and over again by dint of high profile corporate examples.

Here there is little about the access and democracy quotient offered by these new platforms. Theres' very little about me and you. It's all about making a killing, of being first and of getting ahead -- of becoming Web 2.0 savvy... or miss the bus.
For instance:Mature companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems.
An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century.
So Wikinomics is a sort of open sesame for Web start ups and with all its fanfare misses the essential processes that strengthen the utility of these new online tools. While it is true than any book written about online collaboration is going to be out of date the day it is published, there has to be something ironic about the fact that a hard copy book is deployed to proclaim the delights of the web.

The whole point of Web 2.0 technologies is the doing and the everyday engagements -- but Tapscott's approach isn't very hands on. Instead it's a sort of banana oil salesman approach as though you can only cross the one threshold offered by the doorway described in Wikinomics.

For your actual web options, especially the potential dynamics of collective projects, you'll have to delve further by studying the more cogent and philosophical discusions of the more academic and engaged Web 2.0 commentators.

Web 2.0 warrants the tools of science and sociology for its relevance to humanity to be logged, not people, like Tapscott, who can only see corporate make overs written in the clouds.

You could even start that investigation on Wikipedia by checking out its Web2.0 entry.
More substance t be had there than in Tapscott's 320 hard copy pages....