One of the biggest trends we are seeing emerge from the Internet is the acceptance of messiness versus perfection, amateur reactions vs. professional planning
The Cluetrain Manifesto and Small Pieces Loosely Joined both identified and described this concept. So did Tim O'Reilly in his essay on the Internet Paradigm. Most recently, Adam Bosworth has described it in his speech on Intelligent Reaction vs Intelligent Design. The most successful systems today are those that grow 'bottom-up'. Why? They are inherently more adaptable and easier to change because no one person 'owns' the design. And being adaptable is more important today than ever before, as the world seems to change so fast. Charles Darwin identified the core element to survival - responsiveness to change. A need for perfection does not sit well with a need for continuous change.
"Imagine what would have happened if we had deliberately set about building the web... We would have planned it, budgeted for it, project managed it... and we would have failed miserably. It grew bottom-up. The designers weighed perfection against growth and creativity, and perfection lost." - David Weinberger
It's a powerful statement. Next time you are trying to design the perfect system, think about it.
Historically, the Encyclopaedia Brittanica was the source for reference information. You could purchase a few trees worth of books that contained the answers to everything. Sure, there were (and are) lots of other encyclopaedias (and those of a more religious nature may argue there are other books that contain the answers to everything we need to know), but Brittanica was considered the gold standard...
...along came Wikipedia - an online encyclopaedia written, and maintained, by anybody. Yes, anybody. You don't have to be a qualified librarian, or scientist, or whatever. You can create an entry in Wikipedia for any subject that crops up in your mind. You can write anything you want. You can describe a cat as a 5-legged blue reptile, if you want. It's written by the community, for the community. The 'authorities' continue to dismiss its value (sample news article) and people continue to doubt its value (sample blog entry). People believed that it would become vandalised and unreliable. Recent studies show the median time to repair a 'damaged' page is 5 minutes!
So why does it work? Want a quick definition for Web 2.0? Click on the word and you'll find the latest thinking on this subject. Does Britannica even have an entry for Web 2.0 yet? And not only will you find the most recent thinking, the content will include links to related sites, pages, articles, opinions, all that provide further information on the topic. Want to see what the definition was 3 weeks ago? Click on History tab and compare earlier versions. The topic is alive, it's current, it feels real. Sure, if you are researching a cure for some tropical disease, you probably are not going to rely on Wikipedia. But that's a small minority of the global population. And the Internet is for all of us, not the chosen few.
Question Authorities - Gary Wolfe, Wired Magazine, May 2005 (print ed.)
Civil engineers spent 4 years studying the deconstruction of the World Trade Center towers. Lesson learned: Disobey authority. In a connected world, ordinary people often have access to better information than officials do... According to engineers, use of elevators in the early phase of evacuation, along with the decision not to stay put, saved roughly 2,500 lives. This disobedience had nothing to do with panic. The report documents how evacuees stopped to help the injured and assist the mobility-impaired... The people inside the towers were better informed and far more knowledgeable than emergency operators far from the scene... [They] answered their cell phones and glanced at their blackberries... News of what was happening [i.e. this was a terrorist attack, not an accident] passed by word of mouth, and fellow workers pressed hesitating colleagues to continue their exit...
Why unprofessionalism is inherently good - Robert X. Cringely, March 1998
The Gadget Show ran a test to see how easy it was to generate a following on the Internet. One presenter was assisted by a viral marketing company - they created an interactive online game complete with dodgy video, and marketed it to various gaming and social networking site. End result - 200,000 hits. The other presenter had to go it alone - he created a self-portrait video, doing The Caterpillar Dance in public locations, and posted it on YouTube. End result - 2 million hits, the 7th most viewed video on YouTube in one week.
We may not like the results, but they cannot be ignored. Watch and learn... (Blog post, Nov 07)
A different but equally balanced take on the amateurs versus professional debate. In this example, the author tried to start a company that relied on amateur contributions. And the venture failed. It's one thing trusting amateurs over professionals when the conditions are appropriate (i.e. disruptive and unique) but to try and use amateurs in a business model designed for professionals is a different matter entirely. It's a different set of expectations. Full blog post...
An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media - Steve Outing, Nov 07)