Business IT Forum, March 3-6, 2008, San Ramon, California. This was an annual gathering of business-IT leaders within one of super-major oil companies that I was attending. Social computing was one of the topics addressed during this 3-day session. It was quite coincidently surprising and personally entertaining as a week before I managed to post Social Networking and Balance of Power to this blog. Listening to speakers in a break-out session and technology trend keynote, it's a bit deja vu, connecting dots back about 4-year ago my conversation with a good friend of mine. Andy Eyschen has been an independent consultant working and travelling around the globe and often dropped by at my office when he is in town. We're discussing about knowledge management, learning that it was not about knowledge database that mostly matter. It was connecting the subject matter experts that would really be the name of the game.
Back to the future, I could not be able to resist thinking that it's in a way transforming into or surfacing as what we see today as the phenomena of social networking. Or in broader and more general context, social computing. The wall of hierarchy is falling down for the sake of more collaboration and sharing, connect thru on-line networks with each node (user, people) able to be a subject active contributor rather than an object passive reader. It is not a fad. Nor is it something that will pass you or your company by. Forrester Research articulated that gradually, social computing will impact almost every role, at every kind of company, in all parts of the world... Big names like Microsoft and IBM have established research groups dedicating to social computing.
Wikis, blogs, "walls" on people-connect tools, and the like establish a paradigm shift to user-generated content, trusting users as participants or co-developers. Millions and millions of people do write, post, interact, share and refine on topics of interest to them - no money involved (well, not the first and foremost, as to some extent and forms, you might "invite" commercial ads), it's just out of curiosity, enthusiasm, and feeling good to contribute. The result ? collective intelligence is being embraced and well established. Here is the example of the work of many collaborating in Wikipedia formulating social computing :
In the weaker sense of the term, social computing has to do with supporting any sort of social behavior in or through computational systems. It is based on creating or recreating social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Thus, blogs, email, instant messaging, social network services, wikis, social bookmarking and other instances of what is often called social software illustrate ideas from social computing, but also auction software and other kinds of electronic market or electronic negotiation platforms where people interact socia
And what the hell is Web 2.0 ? Don't get it wrong. It is not a product. Nor it is a software release. It is a second generation of internet technoligies that pave ways for social computing. The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International in 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use webs. According to Tim O'Reilly (founder of O'Reilly Media and supporter of the free software and open source movements) on clarifying What is Web 2.0, there's still a huge amount of disagreement about just what Web 2.0 means, with some people decrying it as a meaningless marketing buzzword, and others accepting it as the new conventional wisdom. He formulated the initial brainstroming with some examples below:
Web 1.0 ------------- Web 2.0
DoubleClick --------> Google AdSense
mp3.com -----------> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
publishing ---------> participation
Got it ? No ? A high-level executive addressing the Business IT Forum mentioned above started his speech by mentioning about social networking that his kids are coversant in playing around and said jokingly that he/we might be dynosaurs by now. So watch out. A new generation is born! Generation W2 - social interaction growing on top of Web 2.0 foundation. Unlike with many notion of generations before, it is not bound by age nor time-stamp (date) when those people are born at the same period. It is a network of community that has the energy and enthusiasm to embrace collaboration and sharing, across boundaries of age, geography, and hierarchy.
Again, a collective intelligence, a global brain. Be part of it or be virtually isolated in Jurassic Park!
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3 comments:
jadi dibahas pak ?
I enjoy this writing a lot! I actually was at "Awe" when my younger brother told me, when he was studying in Japan, he earned money by doing "Second Life Games". I was so shock that he can actually play a game by paying as much as USD 20 and in return they will give him SL 2,000,000 - SL is their currency of second Life games. The game is with this SL 2 Millions he can build a house and buy a car in a virtual world and he can choose to be either an employee or a businessman. The installment is USD 20 and he can not top up the credit unless he is able to make money out of this SL 2Mills - he can only top up the credit from the money he earns from the 2 Mills. So the game is almost like "having a virtual life" and to my amaze, some of the player can earn as much as USD 8500per month because he is successfully build a virtual Mall and Coca Cola company wanted this mall to sell a "Virtual coca cola". This is on online game and played by real people. So if the player had lots of SL money, the player can cash it out and the money will be transferred to the player bank. It were as if the player were playing a real "Monopoly" or "Simcity" games. This is the same as - If you remember "Tamagotchi"- an explosive game in Japan back in the early 90s of having an electronic pets. This game is very similar to that but more dealing on city, houses, business, etc. The player can die during the game if the player can not earn more out of the SL 2 Mill installments, the player will be out of the games unless the player buy a new installments of USD 20. I dont know what happens to this game but clearly i havent heard of it now. Seeing someone can actually earn up to USD 8500 a month, dont you think everybody deserves a "second life" in this world to fix the mistake that we did in the real life? I thought this game is cool and you are correct, sometime collective intelligence can fix some of the mistake made by people who called themselves "EXPERD" and still dont know what they are talking about. I agree collective intelligence is a mandatory things to be seen as one of the alternatives when we need to seek for an opinion or even a simple solution or merely "Collective intelligence in a Virtual world may be out of reach as it stays virtually and sometimes anonymously but it does not mean it is not real". Grande Pinto Gracias from the spanish lady! Hope your day is great!
It's really amazing how far that the virtual world can bring us. Good story on Second Life. I have never tried the game -- probably need to experience one later.
seems that you get in touch with so many things. Incredible!
We'll see how the collective intelligence really work in real world. Gracias. See u next.
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