Wiki-Wishes

Having spent the past three years of my life in the Enterprise 2.0 / Collaborative software market, I remain struck by the industry’s continued lack of ability to define a compelling reason for enterprises to adopt new software applications, such as blogs, wikis, microblogs, etc. In the early days of the Enterprise 2.0 movement, much of this software was dismissed as the next wave of Knowledge Management, which was largely viewed as a zero ROI investment (or at least in the eyes of the venture capital community, it did not produce any break out, high return investments). Today, it is largely viewed as a necessary evil because the likes of Facebook and Twitter are impossible for the enterprise to ignore.

Unbundling the 20th Century Mindset, Brian Magierski

This is a piece written for a specific audience– people interested in the ways that businesses are (or are not) adapting new technologies– so it’s a little heavy on jargon. (If you are one of those people, of course, it’s not jargon at all.) But it’s worth reading because we will either find a way to use these technologies for the greater good or they will be used against us.

We could use these technologies (blogs, wikis) to re-create the workplace along more democratic lines, encouraging transparency iand eliminating the need for a lot of supervisory management. This is particularly important in education, which ought to be, among other things, leaders in workplace democratization. Universities ought to be the leaders of the leaders in this area.

If we don’t start figuring out how to use these tools they will likely be used against us. Especially if we stay unorganized, we will do more but someone else will reap the benefits. Kids who “grow up digital” may well find that, like their parents, their productivity isn’t reflected in a rising standard of living. Indeed, if recent history is any evidence, just the opposite is more likely.