Howard Rheingold: Way-new collaboration
- The old story is that only the fittest survive in business, politics and other areas
- We are seeing a new story spread across multiple disciplines.
- It is about cooperation, collective action and complex interdependencies play an important role.
- Competition takes a back set.
- Human communications media and social organization have coevolved for a long time.
- How did humans band together to get bigger game? We know a new form of wealth emerged.
- Did the people who ate owe something to the hunters?
- Then came the alphabet.
- Then came the printing press and literate people emerged.
- Religion, politics and economies emerged from literacy and then came new forms of wealth.
- Capitalism is a new emergence
- Today every desktp is a printing press, a broadcast station, a community and a marketplace.
- Soon people will be wearing computers linked at speeds beyond broadband.
- Rheingold speaks about the prisoner's dilemma.
- If we are here because of our ansestors competition and cooperation, how are we here?
- Many would reject an offer close to 50-50.
- Instead of innate fairness, our sense of fairness is influenced by our culture.
- Is it true that humans will destroy commons? Yes, in most this is true.
- In many they escaped the prisoner's dilemma by stopping to think that they are prisoners.
- Our notions that a rational self preservation is a dominant factor is not always true.
- People will act to punish cheaters even at a cost to themselves.
- Such people show activity in the reward centers in their brain
- 'Altrusiting punishment may be the glue that holds society together.'
- We may be moving into a very different economic form.
- Sun, IBM, Eli Lilly, Toyota previously competitors are moving toward a more open sharing mode that is detrimental to their self interest by donating to open source, involving the community and suppliers,etc.
- This is how these and other companies like Google and Amazon who deliver APis for others by facilitating openess.
- EBay transformed the Prisoner's dilemma into a assurance game by allowing ranking of both parties.
- Wikipedia uses volunteers to create a free Encyclopedia.
- Bittorrent turns downloaders to uploaders.
- We have not begun to discover all these new trends, but it is time to think about them.
- Political protests are now faciliated around the world with collaboration.
- We may not be better people by collaboration.
- Diseases were believed to be caused by sins until Descartes came along.
- This is going to require effort.
See the presentation here.
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