Yes, I do believe that humans by their very nature are programmed to interact and work as a group. Even in the oldest of stories humans have always had a partner, someone they must work with or against in order to prosper. Much like Rheingold attested to at some point civilization had to realize that more can be done with more people. Rheingold used the metaphor of a family having too much mastodon meat to be able to eat before it went bad. I believe there was a basic human nature that took over in the minds of the people of that time that the people realized that if they did not share the meat the meat would go to waste and another family would still be starving. Now I cannot say for sure, but common sense as it has developed for human beings would lead me to believe that the people of the time of the mastodon realized that if they fed another family than in turn the other family would be indebted to them to where they could gain from the sharing of food.
A concept that Rheingold presented that I thought was extremely interesting and that reinforces the idea of debt was when Rheingold presented the concept of new forms of collaboration create new forms of wealth. The new idea of open sourcing allows for the enrichment of others while companies in turn enrich themselves. The examples that Rheingold used from Toyota and Wikipedia illustrate that through collaboration not only can more be accomplished, but also even better outcomes can occur. The possibilities for collaboration are endless.
Resources:
“Howard Rheingold: Way-New Collaboration” http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html
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The process of collaboration many times brings synergy and better resources than an individual person could offer. Brown and Duguid (2002) in their book: The Social Life of Information, tell a story about a rep and a specialist troubleshooting a machine all day, sharing their stories, experiences, resources, and continually improvising until they solved the problem (pp103-105). Synergy says "the whole is greater that the sum of the parts." We can be the individual parts and get results OR we can work with others, expand our resources and creative thinking, and many times reach MUCH BETTER end products.
ReplyDeleteHi Kassidy,
ReplyDeleteThere are so many examples throughout history that show that when we collaborate, the outcomes are much better and more beneficial to all concerned parties. Even as we looked through the Horizon 2009 report, the first line states: "collaboration between …”
The digital environment has created a new sort of collaboration. Collaboration is not only between corporations an d companies, but also between individuals through the use of social networks and open sources. Open sources cooperation between individuals and other entities creates a wealth of information. One such example is the Edelstein center for social research in Brazil where they have build a Virtual library for social research. “The Center supports the use of the Internet as an instrument for promoting free access to and universalization of knowledge;” this is another form of collaboration .
Edelstein Center: http://www.centroedelstein.org.br/English/
Horizon-Report: http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2009-Horizon-Report.pdf
Virtual Library of Human Sciences: http://www.bvce.org/SociedadeInformacao.asp
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