The big data revolution arguably hit science before it hit other institutions. Powerful scientific instruments and pervasive computing have driven quantum leaps in the amount of data available to scientists, raising new challenges for researchers who have had to develop new methods, tools and institutions for managing and exploring massive datasets. Thankfully, their efforts are surfacing valuable lessons for open data innovators in other fields such as public administration, journalism and health care. In the [...]

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About two months back I was asked by the Globe and Mail to review Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus and Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, two books with sharply contrasting accounts of the digital age to date. It was a fun exercise, with lots to contemplate in both Shirky’s and Carr’s work. The downside was that I had to squeeze a comprehensive review into the measly 1,200 words the Globe editors afforded me. So while the official [...]

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In the forthcoming Macrowikinomics, Don Tapscott and I will be arguing that we’ve gone beyond wikinomics to a more encompassing societal shift as businesses and communities bypass crumbling institutions and old ways of doing business. A lot of things are set to change: the way we produce and consume energy; how governments and financial institutions operate; how we education our children and care for the sick; how we tackle global issues like climate change and bolster nascent [...]

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