User:Julianfbond/what do you think?

What do you think?

I'm currently at the Royal college of Art writing my dissertation about collaboration on the World Wide Web. This new breed of how people are working together is changing how things can be done. People are able to take part in more things than before giving their opinion, advice and lending their expertise. What I am hoping to research is how this is effecting how we can work together and if there are any boundaries that should be left in place. How much can we as a whole be in charge of?

As i'm writing about people taking part and having there say, please feel free to add your own part to this Wiki. I want to know peoples points of view about how you use open source and what you think it should be used for?

Introduction

Communication is not a new thing. We have been communicating in a number of ways since the beginning of human history. The way information has been exchanged and sent has changed dramatically. Written text has been difficult to replicate on a mass scale, each text had to be copied by a scribe, which made the process slow and expensive. This limited the spread of written word to the wealthy and the church. It was not until the invention of the printing press in 1436 by Johannes Gutenberg when the speed of printing started to increase and the cost was also reduced. Since the first printing press the production of the text has increased in speed till the process became so cheap and disposable that the spread of news was become instant. It was not till the industrial revolution that the speed and cost of printing news papers became affordable and were started to be printed every day. How things are published now has complete change. The organisations that used to control the creation of media have been feeling the effects of the internet since (drop in tv viewings, paper sales, video sales). Since the 1990's and the invention of the World wide Web. The public have had access to the internet and the amount it has been used has increase constantly and now effects most parts of our lives. The internet has allowed the spread of information and collect of data to be almost instant and virtually free to any one connected. The internet has effected the way we live but there is still more it will do.

We can now be our own publisher and what we put onto the web can be seen by a vast amount of people, news is created and spread not just by news organisations but by amateurs that have a passion for what they are talking about, we can consult online communities to help us on any topic, business are using it to gain our custom and in the process we have created the biggest mass of information that has ever existed which is still growing every second. We are also taking part in new ways to sell and buy goods, there are now online shops that contain millions of unique products.

With these new abilities to create, store and use this mass of data how has it changed how we work and play and how could we continue to use it? As the internet becomes more normal it is becoming intwined with the way we live. It is starting to become part of with every thing we do. We use the internet to socialise and make new friends (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and sites like Match.com), we also use it to create and establish new communities where we can go to find like minded people or go to ask advice in open forums about how to fix a broken mobile phone (Meetup and howtomendit.com), we use it to buy and sell (Ebay and Amazon), our entertainment needs have never been more varied or accessible (Itunes, Netflix, Lovefilm and youtube), we use it to find out information on sites like Wikipedia and every where you look it is now being used as an advertising space.

Mass of information

The information on the internet can be put into four categories; News, Comment or self expression, reference and entertainment. The traditional creators of these are taking part in the growth of the use of the internet but the more interesting growth is with the new ability for amateur content to seen along side the professional content. Amateur content is in some instances more widely used than the professional equivalent. Wikipedia, created by amateur contributors and has over ten million registered users. One better known professional equivalent is The Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Youtube a video broadcasting site has millions of videos and thousands are added every day by its users.

Online Democracy

what do people vote for?
To ability of the internet to allows vast amounts of people to take part in collective decisions. Sites are organised by a group of people that self regulate, changing and correcting with out the need with any formal figure organisation. This way of organisation is not new, people make collective choices naturally but never on such a scales as what is able to be achieved on the internet. An example of how people are organising them selves is a game that was created 2004 by Jane McGonigal, a lead designer at 42 Entertainment called I Love Bees. 600,000 people took part in the game working together to. I Love bees official website

Hive mind - Collective Decision Making

The theory as to how people make collective decisions with out there being a single leader. groups are able to work together without there being a leader to lead. Even with there not being a structure in how the group is managed the speed in which they can carry out tasks is not effected. This system is true democracy with each member taking part in the decision process and the final outcome being decided by a majority of people agreeing with the original idea or proposal. This could be seen as trend setting as the more people that join in on one thought the more likely it will become more popular. This also links in with the Law of Increasing Return an initial idea is first viewed by a few select people, if this small group agree with the idea they are likely to pass it onto other people and they in turn pass the idea on again this speeds up the amount of people that then support the idea helping it to be seen by a far greater amount of people having more influence over a greater number. The starting of a trend is difficult to predict and control but with the internet it is easy to follow what people are looking at most and once an item reaches a 'Most visited or most popular list' they are again increase there viewing. Internet sites like Google, Twitter and Itunes all have top rated lists. The items on these list are the trend of the moment. The popularity is automatically calculated and changes constantly.

Reasons for giving

The reasons for why people contribute is not always in the knowledge that they will be finically rewarded. People give a huge amounts of their time to help develop online products in the knowing that what they are doing will be added on to the existing program that is open source created to be available to any one how wants it. There are however motive to why people do want to give up there time. The knowledge that they will be known to have taken part and contributed can give the donor recognition.

Fostering Ideas

Is there a way to develop ideas quicker with the aid of the internet?

Creativity Pool A site where people are able to post their own ideas on any subject which is then shared with the community. The idea is then commented on by people who find the idea interesting or give advice about how the idea could be developed. Could a creative company have no full time employees? A network of people could be created to function together to carry out the functions that are needed. With out the fixed workforce people can move in and out changing the strengths that the company has by being able to take people on who are best suited. A solution to a problem could be found by any one using the company interface.

Tools of collaboration

Giving ideas for free. Releasing information or not patenting a discovery gives people the chance to use that information to be able to create their own versions reducing the cost compared to if they had to buy a copy. The Releasing of information also allows more people to be able to look at the information from new angles and in some case being able to solve problems or help be part of a larger group that can work together solving the problem.
An example of the new release of information is of scientific data. Open libraries are giving any one with internet access the chance to use cutting edge research data with out the restrictions of having to pay for research data. The more easily available information is the more it is used in further research this in turn speeds up development.

Inspiration

Us Now
Charles Leadbeater The Author of We-think
Linux
Zopa

Interesting Links on the subject

Gasworks
Nesta
Here comes everybody
Creative Commons
Social Innovation camp
lulu publishing

Lucy + Jorge Orta an introduction to collaborative practices

- edited by Paula Orrell - Black dog publishing 2007

We-think Mass innovation not mass production

- Charles Leadbeater - Profile books 2009

Quotes
P24 - My hunch, and the argument of this book, is that we are witnessing the birth of a different way of approaching how we organise ourselves, one that offers significant opportunities to improve how we work, consume and innovate. The logic of managerial capitalism is being scrambled up. To be organised we no longer always need an organisation, certainly not one with a formal hierarchy.
P31 - The Pew internet & American Life study in the US found that 60 per cent of teenagers using the internet regarded themselves as content-creators, using tools like blogs. In the UK a 2006 survey by Ofcom, the media regulator, found that 70 per cent of teenagers had created content online. That mass of content can make the web lush and attractive, but also like a sea of information that it is difficult to navigate.
P32 - When we ask google to find something, it comes back with its account of our collective choices embedded in the links we have made: it is a collective intelligence service. As such it is one early, no doubt imperfect, answer to the web's cacophony and chaos. There are many others and they share the same recipe: we will not make sense of the mass of information generated by the web on our own; our only hope is to employ our shared intelligence. The more people us the web to say 'I think...' this, that and the other, the more we will need 'We think...' to create some order, to sort the wheat from the chaff.
P35 - Social-networking sites work when they foster a spirit of collaborative self-governance: Friendster suffered a catastrophic loss of members through heavy-handed top-down management.
P52 Comment from Elinor Ostrom - Ostrom found that the commons can work when they are self-governing, when participants can easily monitor one another's behaviour and when sanctions for breaking rules are effective because people want to be part of a community in which reputations matter. She suggests a commons works best with a bounded community, but even large and open communities can sustain a commons if the are broken down into smaller platoons or guilds.
CommentThis means a community needs to know what they are together for. Each individual has to support the main force of the group otherwise the individual will loss the need to be part of that particular group and their contributions will cease to be beneficial and the large group is likely yo exclude the individual. The groups are formed with people who come together because of a similar interests or goals once the reason is lost there is no sense in there being a relationship.
P54 - Gaining recognition from your colleagues through peer review stems from an aristocratic tradition of science in which money really did not matter.

Here comes everybody

Clay Shirky - Allen lane/ Penguin Group- 2008

P90 - 'Now that the cost of posting things in a global medium has collapsed, much of what gets posted on any given day is in public but not for the public.'

Comment - When the word press was first invented it lead to a similar out come. More media was able to get circulated by different people removing boundaries to who could own documents that before where written by scribs which where expensive and slow to produce. before the printing press it was difficult to spread information to a large amount of people. With the printing press the barrier was lowered and now any one with a computer and connection to the internet can publish as much information as the wish for nothing and similarly can view huge amounts of information for free. The professionals and amateurs now share the same space.

P98 -' The old ways of filtering were neither universal nor ideal; they were simply good for the technology of the day, and reasonably effective. We were used to them, and now we have to get used to other ways of solving the same problem. Mass amateurization has created a filtering problem vastly larger than we had with the traditional media, so much larger, in fact, that many of the old solutions are simply broken. The brute economic logic of allowing anyone to create anything and make is available to anyone creates such staggering volume of new material, every day, that no group of professionals will be adequate to filter the material. Mass amateurization of publishing makes mass amateurization of filtering a forced move. Filter-then-publish, whatever its advantages, rested on scarcity of media that is a thing of the past. The expansion of social media means that the only working system is publish-then-filter.'

P112 - 'The first wiki, called the Portland pattern Repository, became an invaluable collection of software engineering wisdom without requiring either formal oversight or editorial controls. By placing the process in the hands of the users rather than embedding it in the tool, the wiki dispensed with the slowness that often comes with highly structured work environments. ' The first Wiki was created by Ward Cunningham, a software engineer is 1995.'

Comment - The wiki allowed the user to be the editor, writer, profreader and publisher at the same time. This opened up the system and speed up the deposit of information.

P117 - 'What was conceived as an open encyclopedia in 2001 has become a general-purpose tool for gathering and distributing information quickly, a use that further cemented wikipedia in people's mind as a useful reference work. Note the virtuous circle at work here: because enough people thought of using Wikipedia as a co-ordinating resource, it became one, and because it became one, more people learned to think of it a as co-ordinating resource.'

Comment - A Wiki works like a open management system. The first draft is created by one user. Other people then see the original and decide that they could add some thing they know about the subject to the article. This can be repeated and adjusted a infinite times and with the internet accessible to so many people the chances are that there will be people willing to give up a small part of the time and knowledge to make the article accurate and to continue to develop. How many hours are collectively spent editing Wikipedia?

P122 - 'In 1991 Richard Gabriel, a software engineer at sun Microsystems, wrote an essay the included a section called "Worse is Better," describing this effect. He contrasted two programming languages, one elegant but complex verses another that was awkward but simple. The belief at the time was that the elegant solution would eventually triumph; Gabriel instead predicted, correctly, that the language that was simpler would spread faster, and as a result, more people would come to care about improving the simple language than improving the complex one.'

Comment - This is one of the reasons why Wikipedia managed to grow. It was simple to understand and to use. So with more people able to contribute the better it would become and the big it would grow. So to involve a large amount of people in development the system that people use to contribute must be simple and easy to understand and the original idea should be easily developable.

P123 comment - The Power Law. The person with the contributions has made twice as many contributions than the second biggest contributor and the third biggest contributor has made half as many again, this distribution of contribution till it reaches 1 where most of the contributor have only done so once. This is how the distribution of work is in many social systems.

P128 - "To understand the creation of something like a Wikipedia article, you can't look for the representative contributor, because none exists. Instead, you have to change your focus, to concentrate not on the individual users but on the behaviour of the collective.'

comment - This means that whilst people are taking part in a community they are most only contributing to a small part of the system which pieced together is larger.

P139 -'The articles grow not from harmonious thought but from constant scrutiny and emendation.'

Comment - As people views are always different then anything that is create on a creative commons should give people the opportunity to disagree and be able to make adjustments. People are not directly working together but against.

P159 - 'This is why many of the significant changes are based not on the fanciest, newest bits of technology but on simple, easy-to-use tools like e-mail, mobile phones and websites, because those are the tools most people have access to and, critically, are comfortable using in their daily lives. Revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new technologies - it happens when society adopts new behaviours.'

comment - The web is used as a tool which has then made it easier for people to work together to create changes, because it has become easier to find and become part of an action group, groups can form quicker than ever before and organisations that are unfamiliar with some many people being able to take part are now unable to count on only a few people getting organised that they are now having to manage the roles much more openly. This is not to say that organisation are not also using this to there advantage. Charities and lobby groups are able to amass huge amounts of people to be a part of a cause. This helps them increase their reach in a cheap way.

The Long Tail

How endless choice is creating unlimited demand. Chris Anderson, Random House, 2006.

P.17 In the tyranny of geography, an audience spread too thinly is the same as no audience at all.

P.24 For the first time in history, hits and niches are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.

P53 A long Tail is just culture unfiltered by economic scarcity.

P98 We're entering and era of radical change for marketers. Faith in advertising and the institutions that pay for it is waning, while faith in individuals is on the rise. Peers trust peers. Top-down messaging is losing traction, while bottom-up buzz is gaining power.

P99 The collective now controls the message.

P116 the role of a filter is to elevate the few products that are right for whoever is looking and to suppress the many that aren't

P123 However, in the Long Tail markets - where distribution is cheap and shelf space is plentiful - the safe bet is to assume that everything is eventually going to be available.

P174 John Hagel, a management consultant. "The more choice we have the more we have to decide what it is we really want. The more we reflect on what we really want, the more involved we get in the creation of the goods we buy and use (via customisation). The more we participate in the creation of products and services, the more choices we end up creating for ourselves."

P230 Today, as more and more TV migrates from scheduled world of live broadcast to the on-demand world of streaming Web video, we're about to enter an era where distribution markets are as good as concentrated ones. P183 The same Long Tail forces and technologies that are leading to an explosion of variety and abundant choice in the content we consume are also tending to lead us into tribal eddies. When mass culture breaks apart, it doesn't re-form into different mass. Instead, it turns into millions of microcultures, which coexist and interact in a baffling array of ways.

On Demand books

Speech given by Jason Epstein at the 2009 O’Reilly Tools Of Change for Publishing Conference

"We are in a similar situation today. Like blind men in a room with an elephant, we cannot begin to imagine the eventual consequences as digitization and the Internet ignite a worldwide Cultural Revolution orders of magnitude greater than Gutenberg’s inadvertent implementation of western civilization."

The radically decentralized digital marketplace has already rendered traditional publishing infrastructure -- warehouses, inventory, shipping, returns and so on redundant.

As factory based production and distribution gradually give way to web based production and marketing the cost of entry for publishers will decline to practically zero.

Together with a high speed duplex printer this compact version 2.0 which, when its design is completed, will accommodate books of as many as 800 pages and can produce a 320 page, library quality paperback of any size between 4 x 4 and 8.5 x 11 identical to the factory made original in seven minutes for about a penny a page for consumables. The eventual cost of the machine will be no more than an office copier. The Espresso machine eliminates completely the Gutenberg supply chain by delivering a finished book from a selected digital file to the end user with no intervening steps: no inventory, no warehouse, no delivery cost, no spoilage and no returns.

One of these machines, installed a year and a half ago in the bookstore of the University of Alberta now makes about one hundred books a day, seven days a week, including publisher owned custom course books, professor created course materials, out of print and pd titles, custom anthologies, short print runs for small publishers, vanity titles, conference proceedings, user manuals, facsimiles of rare library books, replacement titles for the library and so on.

Collective intelligence design

Italic text - guest-edited by Christopher Hight and Chris Perry - Architectural design, Vol 76, no. 5,September/ October 2006

Who Really matters - Art Kleiner - Currency/Doubleday, 2003
A guide on how to identify the influential people in organisations who have control over the direction of the organisation. It say's that the people who are seemed to be at the head of the firm do not always have the most influence over how decisions are made.
commentIt might be interesting to know how these people who gain this influence act. In some cases they are external people who have power due to the role they have in the company, like share holders or unions as there thoughts must be listened because they would normally have a vested interest in how the organisation performs. The more interesting people would be people how do not have decision making role in the formal structure of the company but still are able to effect how it runs. What is the reason for these types of people wanting to gain control of decision making?

Insect Lives - Edited by Erich Hoyt and Ted Schultz - Harvard University Press

Hive MInd - Kevin Kelly P49 "Where is 'this spirit of the hive'.. . where does it reside?" asks the author Maurice Maeterlinck as early as 1901. "What is it that governs here, that issues orders, foresees the future... ?" We are certain now it is not the queen bee. When a swarm pours itself out through the front slot of the hive, the queen bee can only follow. The queen's daughters manage the election of where and when the swarm should settle. A half-dozen anonymous workers scout ahead to check possible hive locations in hollow trees or wall cavities. They report back to the resting swarm by dancing on its contracting surface. During the report, the more theatrically a scout dances, the better the site she is championing. Deputy bees then check out the competing sites according to the intensity of the dances, and will con- cur with the scout by joining in the scout's twirling. That induces more fol- lowers to check out the lead prospects and join the ruckus when they return by leaping into the performance of their choice. It's a rare bee, except for the scouts, who has inspected more than one site. The bees see a message, "Go there, it's a nice place." They go and return to dance/say, "Yeah, it's really nice." By compounding emphasis, the favorite sites get more visitors, thus increasing further visitors. As per the law of increasing returns, them that has get more votes, the have-nots get less. Gradually, one large, snowballing finale will dominate the dance-off. The biggest crowd wins. It's an election hail of idiots, for idiots, and by idiots, and it works mar- velously. This is the true nature of democracy and of all distributed gover- nance. At the close of the curtain, by the choice of the citizens, the swarm takes the queen and thunders off in the direction indicated by mob vote. The queen who follows, does so humbly. If she could think, she would remember that she is but a mere peasant girl, blood sister of the very nurse bee instructed (by whom?) to select her larva, an ordinary larva, and raise it on a diet of royal jelly, transforming Cinderella into the queen. By what karma is the larva for a princess chosen? And who chooses the chooser?
Comment Could this be seen as to how decision are made in groups? Once one person puts forward a thought the success of that being taken up within a community depends or more people agreeing with it and it then becoming what that group must follow. A common consensus is reached by the group. The original donator of the thought does not actually have control whether the idea is take be the group. The decision is made by the majority of the group and the further ideas being generated.

Journals

The 20-year-old at heart of web's most anarchic and influential site - Guardian 20th July 2008

Tools

AbeBooks