Last month, I blogged about my general impressions of the Web 2.0 summit conference, and noted that one of the speakers (Don Tapscott) had a forthcoming book entitled Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything. Actually, it turns out that he co-authored the book with one of his colleagues, Anthony D. Williams (whose blog is here). In any case, the book has now come forth, and Amazon delivered it to my door yesterday. I’ve read through the Introduction and first chapter, both of which are available for free download here — and since it could take several weeks (e.g., on subway rides, plane trips when I’m stuck in a middle seat and can’t use my laptop computer) before I finish the remaining chapters, I thought I would post my initial comments now.

As the book’s subtitle indicates, the authors believe that wikinomics — which they define as “a new art of science and collaboration” — will “change everything.” In the introduction, they go even further:

“This is more than open source, social networking, so-called crowdsourcing, smart mobs, crowds wisdom, or other ideas that touch upon the subject. Rather, we are talking about deep changes in the structure and modus operandi of the corporation and our economy, based on new competitive principles such as openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally.”

I’m a big believer in Web 2.0, Wikipedia, collaboration, openness, peering, sharing, and all those good things; but I can’t help getting a little nervous when I hear people proclaiming that any particular invention, product, idea, philosophy, or religion is going to “change everything.” Maybe it will, and maybe it will all happen within the next 5 years; after all, it’s reasonable to assert that Google has “changed everything” within certain areas of human endeavor. But I have to admit that I’ll be continuing on through the remainder of the book with just a bit of healthy skepticism, watching to see if the authors indulge themselves in what used to be called irrational exuberance. For example, will wikinomics affect only large companies, or small companies too? Will it affect only corporations, or perhaps government too? (Interestingly, Williams blogged about that here, back in early October.) How powerful are the forces that will try to restrict, deflect, or squash wikinomics, and what can we do about it?

I don’t have definitive answers for any of these questions, and it appears that the authors are humble to realize that they don’t, either. Indeed, they are (to use Microsoft’s famous phrase) eating their own dog food. As they write at the end of the Introduction,

“Join us in peer producing the definitive guide to twenty-first-century strategy on www.wikinomics.com. It is our hope that rthis book will transcend its physical form to become a living, real-time, collaborative document, cocreated by leading thinkers.”

This “definitive guide” turns out to be … ta da! a wiki! Referred to on their site as the Wikinomics Playbook, the authors apparently plan to start up some kind of wiki-based creation, in January 2007, to enlarge, expand, and continue the ideas presented in their book. Sounds like an interesting idea, and I plan to sign up as soon as it’s available. Heck, why wait? I just signed up, and will hopefully get a notification from them in due time.

Jeez … I got so involved in bouncing around from one link to another while writing this short commentary on the Introduction to Wikinomics that I’ve run out of time for blogging tonight. Well, at least I won’t be faced with my usual dilemma tomorrow: what on earth am I going to blog about today without sounding like a total idiot? Tune in tomorrow for a brief commentary on Chapter 1 of this interesting new book.