Cases
In these cases and a number of articles for further reading, we are beginning to scratch the surface of what it means to be “digital enterprise” (and, by inclusion, a “digital employee” and a “digital customer” – these last two not being customary terms just jet).
In the first case and the accompanying exercise, we look at e-books and at the way in which one of the oldest, most successful technologies of our civilisation (the book!) is changing. This change has been in the making for a while, but no change in the market place can be successful with technology alone: it needs entrepreneurs, customers, and providers to be aligned for an entire industry to change. Since I love to write and read, I am personally more involved in the changes around the book than in other changes, I admit!
The second case is actually a bundle of cases – it refers to the term “Web 2.0″ which we’ve been hearing a lot about since about 2005. This is a change that involves a paradigm change related to not only the use of the web, but the creation of content: if web 1.0 was a globalised version of the old information push-and-pull provision paradigm, then web 2.0 stands for co-creation of content and the blurring of boundaries between content producers and content consumers (the term “prosumer” is also used here). Personally, I have been involved in the creation of web 1.0 almost 20 years ago. As students today, web 1.0 content will seem static and boring to you. Web 2.0 also implies an explosive increase of social media tools such as blogs and twitter, which are central to this course.
There is almost too much here to digest – the article by Tim O’Reilly himself is just an entry point. The case however, is a lot more recent – “Ushahidi” is a mashup between texting and GoogleMaps – in an introductory TED talk, Erik Hersman talks about Ushahidi and what he calls “the next big thing” in social media – exciting, cutting-edge stuff.
Date: March 21, 2009