Lisa Gansky

This book touches a very interesting and important subject (how the internet is now revolutionizing the way we interact with physical objects and services, basically by focussing on sharing ressources as opposed to buying them outright), but sadly fails to keep up with it. There is no real logic to the chapters, as the author mainly seems to be repeating her point over and over while trying to illustrate it with new examples. I bravely read through the whole opus in case I missed something, but I can safely say that reading any 10 random pages of this book will be entirely sufficient, as everything else will be only a slight variation of these pages. Moreover, entire pages are taken over by superfluous "illustrations" that bring no extra information whatsoever. Worse, the illustrations are also plagued by the repetitive curse, further diluting the small amount of extra information they might have added. The author seems nevertheless quite familiar with the concept she exposes, and with several of the examples stated, which is reassuring. Even though she spent her entire professional life in various computer and internet-related companies, she's alas seriously lacking in geek cred, peppering her prose with incorrect technical statements...
This book still gets a star for the very good companion website: http://www.meshing.it
And half a star for at least trying to bring an important subject to the attention of people who somehow managed to oversee it.
If you're interested in this subject, I would instead recommend reading "What's Mine is Yours: the rise of collaborative consumption" by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, who do a much better job at describing the phenomenon and predicting its future.… (meer)