Chuck The Geek.com

The New World?

February 3rd, 2008 by Chuck Sharp

I’ve begun reading the book Wikinomics. It’s fantastic. It attempts to answer questions like: how can certain publishers publish digital copies of their books free on the net? How can publishing businesses like music distribitors still make money in today’s peer-to-peer sharing world? How are businesses able to exploit the talents (they used the phrase “torrent of human knowledge”) of 6 billion people? How can we fully utilize the capacities that exists across the whole world? How can we use distributed, cooperated computing to uncover scientific knowledge and end AIDS? How did Linux thrive in a Windows world?

The answer appears to be related to the abilities that the Internet delivers. Through information openness, peer-to-peer collaboration, widespread information sharing, and acting globally, we are able to accomplish things that could scarcely be imagined in the past.

So far, this book is inspiring images in my head of people’s thoughts spreading like fire across the world, people having voices globally that never had a chance before. I imagine how we all start using are spare computing power to contribute to human betterment through scientific grid data analysis. What if we all became vocal on the web, in Myspace, forums, Flickr, Google maps, epinions, amazon, etc? What if the web really could provide a vehicle for real change in the world, if we only used it?
Stay tuned. More to come.

Entry Filed under: Information Technology, Philosophy