[p2p-research] mongoliad

[Alex Rollin]

Great idea.  The first I've seen on the iphone platform but I've been
building similar web applications for years.

The fact that Stephenson is so amazingly popular will help this effort.

For fans of his work, this is a boon.  They will be able to author a
book with him, and benefit from his expert guidance while they
contribute.

My experiments with this model in the past have shown that
'time-to-market' is an important consideration.  The comments on the
IO9 page show that many users still do not value or understand the
concept, and that is the majority of the population.  Fans of
Stephenson's work will be more likely to jump at the opportunity.

In the future we will see much larger efforts like this.  For now, the
larger efforts are often mired in legal or coordination swamps that
are difficult to navigate.  An example of this is the Open Textbook
Project, and California's attempt at a World History book:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/COSTP_World_History_Project/Causes_and_course_of_the_First_World_War

This project is being written TO the legal guidelines for World
History for the State of California.  The benefits of the product will
be far more widely received, but that is only if it can ever happen.
It's interesting that the project is so valuable, too.  In the case of
COSTP (California Open Source Textbook Project) you have a user
community of teachers numbering in the 10s of thousands.  In fact, if
you ask 10 California teachers, at least 5 of them will tell you they
could afford another aide (a real assistant teacher) in their
classroom for all the money that textbook publishers make from new
versions of their textbooks annually.  9 our of 10 California teachers
will tell you that the standards and testing for California are making
things worse, too.

Even though this is the case, that teachers want to do it a new way,
they also need new education and training to participate in something
like COSTP.  Stephenson is lowering the barrier for that kind of
participation, and that may be the most important innovation here.

At any rate, the 'living book' concept is very disruptive for our
stability-craving psyche, and the fact that a well known and trusted
author is able to pioneer the trail is no surprise.  This effort can
give us some hope that the 'asset class' of 'living books' will become
more common, better understood, and that participation will become
easier.  Why, we might even start to fel confident that, once the book
is 'cooked' enough, that we'll be able to access it without paying,
and that our children will, too, and they they will be able to edit
the book as well!

In some ways we have to see this as a further democratization of the
Wikipedia concept.  Wikipedia has a narrow mission when you start to
think of how it compares to the sum total of every library on the
planet, as compared with the Encyclopedia Britannica.

While Wikipedia's goals are wide, they are not necessarily deep.
That's one way of seeing what Stephenson is doing as 'new'.  He's
going deep in swordfighting and mysticism.  He could normally spend
over a year researching a book, and now their might have 250,000
people collecting that material for the collaborative edition.  I
don't know anything about swordfighting, but I'm quite the closet
mystic, and you can bet I'll be signing up.

In this way, we will see a lot of collaboration going into depth in
subjects that aren't covered by Wikipedia or other
gigantically-wide-and-not-deep databases.  For example, a friend of
mine has had the idea that there should be an Open Source DSM, a new
and wider sourced version of the DSM-IV Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders
(http://www.psychiatryonline.com/resourceTOC.aspx?resourceID=10).  He
sees this book, and the expert sourcing, source control, distribution
control etc etc as absolutely indicative of how our society operates
on the whole and an excellent target should a new society wish to
emerge.

Stephenson's new effort may be a drop in the pan, but it is also a
signal of the coming wave.  This idea: is easy entry, guaranteed
outcome, expert guidance, clear rules for participation, interesting
subject area. That is the new entertainment.  We can argue about
licensing and ownership of the product, the platform, and exploitation
of the workers amongst other things, but this is Peer Production.

Alex Rollin
http://alexrollin.com

California Law allows digital textbooks in 2020.
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/California-Law-Encourages/20526/

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 5:41 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> hi Richard,
>
> I'm hoping you can cover this topic, the Mongoliad, from your expertise in
> social publishing? (for the p2p-f blog)
>
> see
> http://io9.com/5549740/neal-stephenson-and-friends-fight-for-the-future-of-ebooks-with-the-mongoliad
>
> Michel
>
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