As the Don Tapscott states in our text, "New paradigms cause disruption and uncertainty, even calamity, and are nearly always received with coolness, hostility, or worse." (pp. 275) Change is often perceived as a threat. But as Dr. Verlengia stated in his Strategic Thinking and Decision Making class, change is not frightening for it own sake, it is the loss that is associated with the change that is frightening. (Drake University; September, 2007)
When the first blacksmith contemplated how best to add automobile to his repartee, rather than remaining fixated on the livestock trade, it was probably with a certain amount of trepidation. He, and, times being what they were, it undoubtedly was a he, probably wondered how much business he would lose, what his employee would think about the changes, and what would the community at large think of the change. The truth is that horseless carriages were not particularly popular by many members of the community. The were confusing to operate, broke down often, and their were only a limited number of roads on which to drive them.
Emerging technology is somewhat the same. I mention wikis and blogs and my family, friends, and coworkers look decidedly uncomfortable. I want to add a blog site to my work website and my supervisor suggests that we get with personnel to ensure that we are not violating any federal policies or ethics issues.
That will change over time; of that I have no doubt. I just hope that I live long enough to see government websites embrace the new technology.
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I am also teaching a class on Web 2.0 Revolutions at the University of North Dakota, and am also using Wikinomics as a text book. Any advice? kristin.powell@und.edu
thanks.
This is a couple of years late - I don't quite know how that happened. Your class is long over, but I wanted to let you know in case you are still teaching it, that I am currently using wiki's in conjunction with SharePoint. I really liked the book and I guess my advice would be to allow the students to use the book to set up business applications as well as personal applications. As the SharePoint administrator for my state (I work for a gov't agency), I find that people are amazed at the diversity of business applications with blogs and wikis. Although I am a boomer, I also find that boomers are the most hesitant in adapting to new technology so I really have to change the terminology, or define it up front, to increase their comfort level.
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