As I was reading this week’s book, Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, I was struck by how much the Web is changing and how quickly that change is occurring. I have already incorporated some of the changes into my life, and some of them I learned for the first time – like b-net and TakingITGlobal.
As I have been reading this book and the other books for the course, I have been contemplating not just the changes on the Web, but how the online changes are impacting our offline lives. Our entire economic structure will probably change as a result of the innovations afforded by the Web’s dynamic, read/write capabilities, and companies that don’t embrace the change – or at least use it – will fall victim to its power.
According to Tapscott and Williams, IBM, once a bastion of intellectual secrets and closed operations, has adopted the open-source method of collaborating to create products of value, and that shift astounds me.
In addition to economic change, our idea of how to educate may also change. Just look at what MIT has done by providing OpenCourseWare. (Wikinomics, Pg. 23) Who can conceptualize where an educational structure without boundaries will take humanity?
Since the Web’s changes (and the trickle down changes to society) are still happening, how would a person – or community of people – set about establishing a Bill of Rights? Would the Bill protect individuals, companies, the Web, or any combination of them? How broad and general would it have to be to apply without discriminating?
It’s true that a great deal of my personal information is available on the Web, and based on long-held beliefs about “rights” to privacy, I want to think my information is being protected.
What if my perceived need for privacy or protection of that information is akin to the IBM or Goldcorp of old that sought closed societies? Isn’t it possible that, like corporations, individuals could benefit from personal information being openly available?
I know it seems absolutely unthinkable, but so much of our, now, ordinary life was unthinkable only a few years ago.
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