We-Think
Mass Innovation, Not Mass Production by Charles Leadbeater
Profile Books © 2008 290 pages
• The Internet radically increases your level of connection with others.
• When you become more connected, you increase your chances for collaboration.
• But by becoming more connected you also increase your vulnerability.
• “We-Think” is a term for Internet-enabled collective thinking: “We think, therefore we are.”
• This collaboration will transform some industries completely, change some
industries somewhat and touch some industries almost not at all.
• We-Think offers powerful new potential for political action and social justice.
• It offers greater economic equality because it freely shares pivotal economic tools.
• We-Think combines innovative, collective aspects of the counterculture, academia and geek experimentation.
• It democratizes the world, widely spreading access to media and information.
• The broader collaboration enabled by the Internet increases freedom by multiplying individual choices.
Charles Leadbeater’s awareness of the limits of Internet-enabled
collaboration lends weight to his discussion of its possibilities and all aspects of the World Wide Web’s real future potential.
The Internet is transforming the world in good and bad ways. It opens access to
information and the media, and allows people to network, despite geographic distance.
Yet, the Web expands the chance that onlookers can monitor individual actions; it exposes
you to unprecedented, unexpected intrusions. The Web is above all open – a place where
barriers are missing or porous; that means both risk and opportunity. Now the Internet
is reaching a crucial point in its development. Use has spread so widely that the Web has
begun to influence everything people do. The core issue is not how many individuals
use the Web, but what happens when they “share and then combine” their thoughts. The
Internet matters most as a platform for sharing.
This sharing provokes a fundamental shift in self-definition. Philosopher René Descartes’
famous line about identity and self-knowledge, “I think, therefore I am,” is changing
amid this connection and collaboration. Today’s motto might be “We think, therefore
we are.” That’s the essence of “We-Think.” Projects like Wikipedia show its possibilities,
negative and positive. “Wikipedia is prone to more errors” than usual encyclopedias,
and took several iterations to come into being. But the voluntary contributors who write
it fix its errors faster than traditional reference works fix theirs, and it is growing at a
tremendous rate, including entries on odd or obscure topics.
We-Think Principles
We-Think’s changes are immense and widespread, but not absolute. The collaborative
principles that define We-Think will not apply in every circumstance. Rather, expect
to see a tremendous clash over the next few years, as collaboration and the traditional
hierarchy push and pull at one another. Expect the results to fall along a spectrum, with
We-Think endeavors at one end and traditionally hierarchical organizations at the other.
And that’s fine. We-Think is founded on voluntary collaboration and choices, not on
dictating any one mode of organization.
We-Think doesn’t require anyone to buy into a specific ideology. It is being adapted
where it works. Take the mapping of the “worm-genome” as an example of We-Think
in action. Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner started mapping the genome of C. elegans
in 1965, but the project was too big for his lab, and too complex for any lab at the time.
Therefore, Brenner shared what he and his team were learning, and other researchers
began to voluntarily take on different aspects of it. As this far-flung community grew,
the technology radically advanced. The Worm Breeder’s Gazette shared the results with the community, as face-to-face meetings provided direction and group identity.
This project took place as computers were really just emerging, and well before many
people were using the Internet. Yet computers, the Web and other modes of connectivity
that define the information age (cell phones, text messaging) have allowed similar
projects, like Linux and the open source code movement, to succeed even faster. These
projects start with “a good core” of dedicated people who provide expertise and initial
direction. Then they blossom as the core “creators give away the material on which others
can work.” This opens the community, providing ways for new members to take part and
supplying much-needed conceptual tools. As people connect, a self-regulating social
structure emerges. The core often remains influential, due to its greater knowledge, but
not due to a need to control the project.
We-Think projects function like working cities. A diverse population allows more
perspectives to emerge; trust and respect provide a frame for interaction. This
population then collaborates, not just in creating new things but also in organizing
them. The various elements of a We-Think community may work independently on
different portions of a shared project (mapping a genome, writing code). People work
on these projects for the joy of it and for recognition from the community. Often this
means hashing out ideas in discussion forums.
Market forces don’t drive pure We-Think projects. Instead, these projects, like
Wikipedia, offer alternatives to products created by the market. This happens, in part,
because market forces tend to focus investigation and creativity too narrowly, shutting
down real creativeness. That said, We-Think offers some alternative business models
with options that are not available in a traditional hierarchy. We-Think thrives on openended
conversations. It both offers and depends on a sense of community, which large
corporations often lack. Rather than using a model in which products flow from producers
to consumers, We-Think engages consumers in co-creation and welcomes product
modifications. For example, take the video game World of Warcraft, where players’ social
interaction fleshes out and partially creates the game’s structure. We-Think redistributes
ownership and leadership fluidly according to individual contributions, not hierarchy.
Where Does We-Think Come From?
You might see We-Think as a collaboration among “a computer nerd, an academic, a
hippie and a peasant.” Actually, its history blends many attitudes that these groups
articulate. The first public discussions of networked computers happened in the late
1960s, as the counterculture was flourishing and many Americans lived on communes.
The movements became directly connected when Fred Moore – part of the Whole
Earth Catalog, which provided a range of tools for counterculture activities – started
organizations to explore “the social impact of computers.”
Numerous 20th century thinkers called for the increased citizen involvement you now
see online. Marshall McLuhan advocated “a retribalization of society” to counter mass
culture. Ivan Illich and Guy Debord supported shifting away from consumption and
spectacle, and toward dialogue and action. Finally, E. F. Schumacher, who wrote Small
is Beautiful, called for “production by the masses, not for the masses.”
These qualities abound in online activity. Social networking sites (for example, MySpace)
create connections. Blogs and wikis let passive spectators become active producers.
South Korea’s OhmyNews uses “55,000 citizen journalists” to provide alternative news
coverage. Media-sharing sites (YouTube for videos; Flickr for photos), let individuals
share and enjoy media that once was available only through mass corporate or government
venues. The most successful sites operate with “a spirit of collaborative self-government,”
like the way traditional peasant groups governed the use of the commons. A Web of
expectations emerges through repeated community interactions that happen with little
top-down adjudication, though small-scale negotiations may continue. While community
governance of a commons can break down, especially if the community collapses, the
Web’s conceptual resources are less vulnerable. Shared use is often strengthening. Taking
too many fish from a lake can deplete it, but taking ideas from a shared pool multiplies
their power, rather than sapping it. The result is a bit like folk music, where people
borrow musical structures from a shared tradition without concern for ownership.
The Implications of We-Think
We-Think won’t move through all areas of the economy equally or at equal speed, but it
is already transforming professions that organize and distribute information. Librarians
face huge change as they try to decide what happens when they no longer shepherd
physical collections of books, but rather conduct access to a digital collection. Moving
academic journals online, and letting manuscripts circulate is speeding up the spread
of information. Journalism, music, publishing…any information-processing venue will
change quickly and immediately; that’s roughly 20% of the Western economy.
Another 50% of the economy is involved in “medium-impact” enterprises, where We-
Think will proceed unevenly. These are fields, like mining, that still employ some
major component directly from the industrial age, or industries that use little digitized
information, such as service companies. Even these areas will come to incorporate We-
Think in surprising ways.
More generally, proprietors are distributing “open-source designs” to do-it-yourself
enthusiasts who want to modify mass products. Various scientists are ambitiously
working on mobile fabrication units that could make anything that matched stored plans.
One version, the “Fab Lab” developed by MIT’s Neil Gershenfeld, is already in limited
use. A few medical communities are experimenting with involving patients more in their
own care by training people with chronic conditions to monitor themselves and share the
results with their medical teams, all electronically.
Online you have access to more open market choices. The combination of cyber-stores’
lower overhead costs and the consumer’s ability to search for any possible purchase
creates countless market niches. The Internet also provides tools that multiply creativity,
allowing you to make art more quickly and spread self-expression more widely.
In politics, increased connectivity and communication have mixed effects. Some critics
say that the Web makes a crowded, noisy world more so. While most political participants
in democratic countries can use the Web, “fundamentalist populist movements” get a
disproportionate amount of online attention. Even terrorists use the Internet to stay in
contact. In general, the Web has contributed to the disruption of hierarchical order. Even
when democratic movements use the Web ethically, for instance, to organize for the civic
good, it has not yet produced more reflective debate, as its champions hoped. Instead,
most people connect with like-minded cohorts.
On the positive side, the Internet brings youth into the political process. In the Philippines,
protestors have used multiple routes (the Internet, mobile phones) to share messages,
circulate petitions, organize demonstrations, spread information and expose corruption.
Many bloggers move faster than the mainstream media to catch cover-ups and distortions.
While China is trying to censor the Internet, even there, activists show online how the
government acts. The Web also enables “ultra-local politics,” letting neighbors connect
in new ways; in some cities, including Boston and Toronto, people in social networks are
getting deeper into politics. Overall, the Web benefits democracy.
The Internet may have some negative effect on equality, in that it connects the already
connected, thus increasing the influence of the few who are already socially and
economically ahead. More basically, many online perks don’t address the needs of the
poor: Shared music doesn’t feed the hungry. Yet, as Yochai Benkler argues in The Wealth
of Networks, “information, knowledge and culture” are essential factors for “human
welfare.” The Web makes it possible to share scientific breakthroughs and mass reference
works (i.e., Wikipedia) with the emerging world.
A tug-of-war between traditional models and We-Think is emerging in several areas. For
example, Cambia, an Australian nonprofit organization, discovered a bacteria that can
replace patented biotechnology, solving some agricultural challenges for poor countries
that can’t afford patent fees. When Alwyn Noronha tried to introduce computers to schools
in the Indian state of Goa, the educational system couldn’t afford Microsoft licensing and
maintenance, so the schools turned to “Linux and other open-source” software. We-Think
leads to the use of “mobile phones to connect borrowers and lenders” for “microfinance”
loans, giving small businesses access to previously unavailable investment dollars.
Skeptics have legitimate reasons to worry about the Internet’s impact on freedom. The
same electronic Web that lets you connect voluntarily can be turned against a free
society: Technology could enable someone to track your actions or expose your secrets.
Instead of fostering collaboration, participating in an online community could create
“group-think,” where everyone follows the herd and individual creativity gives way to
derivative thinking. While those concerns are genuine, electronic connectivity ultimately
enhances your freedom in some key areas. By offering alternatives to mass media, the
Web provides more chances to think freely, to speak back to the media or even to start
your own media outlet at little cost.
Individual identity is not swamped in continual online contact, but rather negotiated,
in a sort of dialogue. Young people who have grown up online are adept at shifting
personas and finding comfortable contacts. Yes, they need skills to do so, but that’s
true in the physical world, too.
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