Mirror, Mirror: Reflections on Chapter 2

It is always a bit of an odd phenomenon when someone puts into words the ideas you’ve been thinking to yourself in an amorphous sort of way and never bothered to try to explain. It feels a bit like someone has read your mind.

The next generation.
What will Creation mean
to it?

Chapter 2 in Wikinomics was that for me, particularly when the authors started describing the “Net Generation” as they term it. I fall on the early end of the spectrum of the generation they define as having been born between 1977 and 1996. I got my first email address in 1997. I’ve been playing on the web in different ways for years now, and in the past 5 years I’ve been BookCrossing, flickring, LiveJournaling and now (much to my chagrin) I’m on Facebook.

It was the philosophy of the Net Gen that I really related to. I don’t sit in front of the TV; I sit in front of the computer. I’m skeptical of information I get from many mass-produced sources and I prefer word of mouth and peer reviews. (I chose my daughter’s car seat based on the reviews on several websites.) I value my privacy, and my individual rights, and always, ALWAYS want to be treated fairly and believe in treating others fairly. (Paraphrased from pages 46-47).

I also relate to the ideas about intellectual property, and how the entertainment industry in particular seems to be missing the boat. While I understand and respect their desire and need to make money off the products they create, they are fighting a rising tide of resistance. I’m completely guilty of “piracy” and of creatively producing my own content. I edited video of my daughter’s first steps to a popular rock song and posted it to YouTube for my family and friends. Part of me can’t help but think that it is great publicity for the song and the artist. If I started making money off the video, that’s one thing, but I was just trying to make those wobbly steps more fun than they already were.

The co-creation of content and the openness of intellectual property comes down to a concept that I mentioned in the last reflection, the concept of building trust, fostering trust, and just plain trusting that the masses will, for the most part, not try to lead one astray. I love the idea presented in this chapter about putting things out there for people to create upon, and working out the commercial licensing rights later so everybody wins.  It is value added with little or no cost added.

In the ALOP classes I’ve taken, there has been a strong emphasis that people are generally self-driven and need to work and to learn to be fulfilled. These new collaborative tools are changing the way people work and learn. I’ve already heard about teachers that are letting students create their own videos for projects, and students doing a fabulous job. Students getting to define together what it is they want to learn, like in this class is an example of the collaboration and creation spilling into “traditional” education.

It makes me wonder about harnessing this power where I work. In the scheduling office of a college, we struggle with how to create and set policies for scheduling spaces and scheduling events that conflict with one another or during high-pressure weeks like final exams. What if we allowed the masses of students and faculty access to the current scheduling policy, or problems with it, and a wiki/discussion board on how to make it better? Are we asking for trouble? I’d be more worried about whether or not anyone would look at it!