Class & Economy, Economy

Well Good Morning to everyone, it was a busy but great weekend in class. I learned a lot about emerging technology, and am wondering how I will ever have time to take advantage of all the resources I was exposed to. This was probably one of the best class sessions I have had in the program, and it certainly went above and beyond in terms of my expectations. Anyway, I am nervous about some of the assignments....especially the PodCast, but I'm sure it's just because I am not use to creating anthing like that. It is certainly a challenging class.

I know you would be disappointed if I didn't at least write a few lines about the Bailout Legislation that failed in the House yeasterday,,,but really I am at a loss for what to say. I would like to think we are a free market society, and businesses have to sink or swim on the decisions they make...including the ones that offer prime mortgages to subprime borrowers. However, this issue isn't just about one company that made a poor decision, and is paying for it. It is about our whole financial system. You would think that government would keep a tighter rope on an industry that has the ability to cripple our country. Instead they are left to pick up the pieces after something bad happens...shame on us.

What is even more sad is the fact that the Bail Legislation really did nothing to help the people who need it more....those borrowers who are in over their heads. Yes, personal responsibility would tell you not to borrow more than you can afford, but is that the fault of the borrower or the lender? Either way the financial industry gets a bailout, and the family of five gets no relief from oppressive mortgage payments. We must do a better job at directing the money where it will do the most good, and that's at the bottom of the chain not the top. What if the government took $700 Billion and began helping families refinance their homes to fit their current income and value of their house? This would still decrease the burden on the financial industry, but would also help the consumer. The difference would be that the focus would be on bailing out the consumer and not the financial industry.

In cases where a lender allowed a family to buy a home which was grossly above their ability to pay, the government could step in to help the family purchase a cheaper home, and allow the more expensive home to go to the irresponsible lender. Again, the consumer would be helped first, and the financial industry would be stuck with their really bad decisions. The bottom line is: we have to help those families who are in terrible financial shape, and worry less about the banks and financial institutions.

Wikinomics Economy

Well, watching the fools in Washington trying to figure an end to the country's financial trouble makes me wonder how technology can save us....or anything for that matter. Of all the organizations that should be open, peering, sharing, and acting globally I can think of none better than our government. Maybe if all the decisions in this country were made by the mass population things wouldn't be so bad....well, they couldn't get much worse can they? If some chemist can cook up an invention in his basement lab to make millions for some chemical company, why can't some concerned citizen think of a way out of a financial crisis in his underwear on the living room couch? Why not? It beats a bunch of rich snobs in the nation's capital doing it.

We don't have to enact every idea of mass coolaboration, just the ones that make sense....right? Instead of a group of 50 or 100, how about a team of a million or two? Now don't give me the bull about writing or e-mailing my ideas to my elected representatives....been there, done that, and got the cheesy form letter with the fake signature. That's all that town is good for, preprinted ideas with phony signatures. Maybe we should spend the time we are taking to fix this crisis and come up with a way to create a department that does nothing but accepts and enacts ideas written for the people and by the people. No more weak legislation from the politicians. Heck, we could even get to the point where we vote online for our legislation, and get rid of the waste of time, effort and money we call Washington.

I know we need some sense of structure as a country, and we need a figure head to represent us to the world. I can handle that. But do we really need the system we have in place when we are capable of so much more? Great ideas aren't just for making money, they are also for saving a nation. Time and time again we prove to ourselves that our system is flawed, and changes need to be made. However, instead of taking the bold steps necessary to correct our problems and making this system better through technology, we continue to run the givernment the old fashioned way....slow and ineffective. Do elected officials need to travel to Washington when teleconferencing will do? Maybe while we are looking at the financial structure of our system we should look at the governmental one as well.....

A Different View

For those of you who have read the last couple of posts you might be saying to yourself, “Who is this guy and what rock did he crawl out from under”? I admit that some of my writing over the last couple of days appears to condemn technology, mass collaboration, and everything that has to do with Wikinomics; but that is far from the case. I simply have questions on how all of this is really going to work from the common person perspective. We have had many problems with the economy over the last several months, and now we are on the verge of a major economic bailout by the federal government. All this because of a new economic revolution where we saw cheap variable interest rate mortgages, and 125% mortgages that allowed millions of consumers who could not afford a home to own one. Good in principle, but bad in reality.

The same could be true of this thinking. Mass collaboration is great as long as all the equity in intellectual property is shared with everyone. However, what I see is large corporations taking advantage of mass collaboration as a way to acquire new inventions worth millions of dollars for little investment. Good for the corporation, but potentially unfair to the creator. One of the examples in the book Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams outline the practices of Proctor & Gamble. Companies can create ways to reward inventors for new creations, and in there example one chemist was paid $25,000 for his creation. But how much has the company made on the invention? Many could argue that the payment satisfied the chemist, and was what he accepted reasonable for his work. But whether or not it was fair compensation was never discussed, and thus my questions about this new way of doing business.

In contrast to all the questions I have about Wikinomics, there are many advantages to acting globally. There is no way around the fact that the world is closing in, and it just gets easier and easier to communicate with people throughout the world. The days of where a persons’ sphere of influence at work and home was bound by the number of people he or she knew from face to face interaction is a thing of the past. This new environment provides a great environment for teams from around the world to participate in projects, become close, and create trust without ever meeting in person.

Wikinomics...I Don't Mean to Rant

As the comedian Dennis Miller use to say, “I don’t mean to get into a rant here” but I really have to be honest about my beliefs whenever I read a book about revolutions. I’m not trying to be negative, nor do I believe that everything written in Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams is wrong. To the contrary, I think a lot of what they have to say makes a lot of sense, especially when it comes to the “Principles of Wikinomics”. Their ideas on, “Being open, peering, sharing, and acting globally” are good ones. But the key question everyone should be asking is: Does this represent something truly inventive, or is just the speed in which everything is done that has really changed? Yes, I admit we didn’t always have the internet, IPods, and cellular telephones, but does that mean that people didn’t communicate?

I found it incredibly ironic that one of the words Tapscott and Williams uses to define peering is socializing. I know I’m old, but when I grew up socializing meant something completely different than it does today. Today many people socialize without ever meeting a person or leaving the comfort of their living room. Is this really a positive thing, and something we should adjust to? And if it is, does this revolution discount the work on emotional intelligence made famous Daniel Goleman in the 1990’s? I mean, if I never have to leave the house to socialize, why should I aspire to become emotionally intelligent? For that matter, why should anyone study leadership, or do anything that can be done faster or better by a machine?

One could argue that the more technologically dependent our society becomes, the less intelligent we become. In sports coaches focus on the basics….a baseball player can’t hit a homerun before they learn the mechanics of how to hit a ball. Yes, chicks love the long-ball, but you can’t hit one if you don’t know how to play baseball. The same with life, how can someone hit a homerun in life if they don’t know the basics? Society will always need garage collectors, home builders, manufacturers, taxi drivers, and so on. How will the Wikinomics revolution make life better for those people? It is easy to wax philosophical about the benefits for organizations, and yes, the new technology does offer great new ways to make more money for some. But what benefit for the rest of us?

Many of the examples Tapscott and Williams point to are organizations and people that already have the benefit of great wealth. In the opening of their book they point to Rob McEwen, the CEO of Goldcorp, Inc. as an example of the new thinking. Mr. McEwen was a former mutual fund manager who through a hostile takeover became the majority owner of the company. His new idea was to offer $575,000 in prize money for ideas on ways for his organization to find more gold on its property in Canada. Great idea, but hardly something the Average Joe could take advantage of. So, where does the average person find life betterment and enrichment in all this? I might be able to answer that question later…or maybe not.

Wikinomics Reality

Although the advantages of mass collaboration in many things is well known, the assumption that it is a world changing event remains to be seen and something that I not easily subscribe to. Every idea that offers the promise of so many advantages by its very nature also offers many disadvantages. It’s the notion of equal and opposite reactions…..for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every good that is offered, there is a balancing negative. I know this sound pessimistic, but it the reality of the world….what comes up, must come down; what goes in, must come out; life is circular….you get the point.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe humankind should still be sitting in the cave chiseling on stone tablets. Mass collaboration is a great thing and something I am 100% in favor of. I just have trouble believing that the world is going to automatically change just because people start collaborating with each other over the internet. Will we amass a great deal of data? Yes. Will some of it be helpful to humankind in a way never before seen? Yes. But is it the second coming of the savior? I doubt it. People are good at collecting data, but not always good about using it….and that’s my point. And the more information we collect, the less obvious the right answers are.

Wikipedia is a great example of this notion. Although it provides a wealth of information and is just as accurate as any other source, it still contains the elements of imperfection. Yes we can collaborate on where to find gold, on what the facts of our past are, science, medicine, and many other positive ventures. However, there are many that use the technology to collaborate on child pornography, drugs, sex, and many other unmentionable ventures. Does that mean that we should stop mass collaboration? No. But what it does mean is that because some humans use these positive forms of communication in less than useful ways, the time we could be spending using the positive data for good has to be spent filtering out the negative. Thus, the advantages are not as positive as we might think.

Yes, Wikipedia provides a good place to seek information for anyone with the means to access it, but can we be assured the information is correct? The site employs five full-time people whose job it is to filter out the negative. Is mass collaboration that exciting when we have to filter out negatives?