Reading 3: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything - Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams

Chapter 3 - peer pioneers
This book gave an insight to how the exchange of information on a global scale significantly changed the business industries. It introduces the Idea of peer production and the impact to date. The chapter outlines some of the pioneering companies which adopted the model first and some reasons behind their decisions. Mass collaboration within industries appears to be the new business model bring together whole societies to the globe marketplace and shaping the way we as individuals can contribute to this ever growing economy of information exchange. In would appear that sharing information in a collaborative manner has become the norm and has produced some new ways of innovating, enhanced products and availability.

This chapter discuses a few of the first pioneers and gives Wikipedia and IBM as good examples. It describes how IBM adopted the openness approach in terms of business to stay ahead and has since become a major contributor within the industry in peer production, despite for years being a company that only produced Hardware and Software that ran only on IBM machines.
It also describes how Wikipedia uses the mass collaboration approach to become one of the world leaders in information gathering. I will only focus on Wikipedia and a few key points I found interesting as it would be hard to summarise both with any depth.

Suggestions made in the beginning years of Wikipedia were that the information provided by them could not be relied upon since anyone could interject with the content of the site. A user may simple post what he or she wanted to and was edited by whomever. Their approach to this was to introduce user id's in the form of registration, which of course can still lead to abuse but would alleviate the problem. In at least holding someone accountable for the postings. Like chat rooms there are often mediators that monitor what's being discussed on a full time basis, here the masses are the mediators and the users of the site are in a way are responsible for the content.

A comparison was made with Encyclopaedia Britannica on various articles and it was found that mistakes had been made in both Britannica and Wikipedia, whereas Wikipedia was able to correct these mistake with relative ease, Britannica could only correct theirs in forthcoming production and because they are printed never at all with what is in circulation.

The credibility of the site has since changed and is regarded in high esteem largely due to the sheer input of expertise from the collaborating users . This is certainly an argument that working collectively has brought about major changes in how we do things and been beneficial in many areas. It was an insightful read on how things have changed and what the future may have in store for those whom continue to contribute in this manner.

comments
When I was at University the use of Wikipedia for research was limited to only a few references per assignment and traditional research method where carried out such as, academic papers, reports, white paper and so on.