The web allows people to share, and that is its biggest flaw: a flat form that anyone can join, a culture that infection, viruses can be spread, ideas and identities can be stolen, and spread across thousand of computers. However, there are ways to bring this unruly world under control: first, who have power to control will fight to retain the flow of technology; second, there should be more forms of peer-to peer control, and surveillance; and lastly, people have to encourage more of self control so technological power grows responsibly.
We-Think is just only a beginning of the new way of thinking and acting that the web's potential can bring to us. It makes a difference when it is used to tackle major challenges
Monday, August 17, 2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Chappter 6: For Better or For Worse
When We-Think can be spread out for everyone to be able to access does We-Think bring more advantages for participants? According to the author, he confidently say Yes. There are three advantages which have been developing such as: Democracy, Equality, and Freedom.
For Democracy
Since Internet has been developing, beside the minor bad side of its, it is a great tool which can produce a plenty of innovations in many fields: Ecomomy, Science, Society, Politic, Inter-connection ... and democracy is not an excception. The more people have communicated, the more infomation has been shared. The participants are able to address their voices, opinion and discussions. From that convenience, We-Thing is a good tool for political purposes. There have been occuring more and more democratic debates where people of different minds debate and resolved their differences. The American presidental 2008, for example, campaign showed the strength of We-Think to help the candidate of Demoracy Party, Obama arriving White House. While We-Think is good for a large of people who love freedom and demoracy and many politicians as well, the benefical demoracy of We-Think is not to be welcomed at some regimes such as China, Iran, and Vietnam. They try to block, filter and firewall any sites containning information of democracy.
For Equality
We can say We-Think should be accessible at anytime, anywhere in our world. Any member of the Earth men or women, young or old, rich or poor should have the same opportunities to access We-Think. Population in developed countries have better chance to take up opportunity the web creates than those who are in developing countries.
If We-Think is good for democracy in developing world, it could bring many benefit to create a new better society: bringing together social entrepreneurs, scientists and foundation to develop new medicine for the poor, researches and discoveries can be donated if they have no intention for commercialising, but can be applied to developing world. Nowadays, more countries are likely to follow this path, and hopefully in a long term, it will create benefit to our lives.
For Freedom
It is certain that the web can intrude private life as every move someone made on the web can be electronically tracked. However, the web still brings benefit in four aspects: freedom to think, to form and express idea independently; freedom to shape the identity, to be who we want to be; freedom as consumers to choose and buy products we want; and freedom to express through creating things that matter.
For Democracy
Since Internet has been developing, beside the minor bad side of its, it is a great tool which can produce a plenty of innovations in many fields: Ecomomy, Science, Society, Politic, Inter-connection ... and democracy is not an excception. The more people have communicated, the more infomation has been shared. The participants are able to address their voices, opinion and discussions. From that convenience, We-Thing is a good tool for political purposes. There have been occuring more and more democratic debates where people of different minds debate and resolved their differences. The American presidental 2008, for example, campaign showed the strength of We-Think to help the candidate of Demoracy Party, Obama arriving White House. While We-Think is good for a large of people who love freedom and demoracy and many politicians as well, the benefical demoracy of We-Think is not to be welcomed at some regimes such as China, Iran, and Vietnam. They try to block, filter and firewall any sites containning information of democracy.
For Equality
We can say We-Think should be accessible at anytime, anywhere in our world. Any member of the Earth men or women, young or old, rich or poor should have the same opportunities to access We-Think. Population in developed countries have better chance to take up opportunity the web creates than those who are in developing countries.
If We-Think is good for democracy in developing world, it could bring many benefit to create a new better society: bringing together social entrepreneurs, scientists and foundation to develop new medicine for the poor, researches and discoveries can be donated if they have no intention for commercialising, but can be applied to developing world. Nowadays, more countries are likely to follow this path, and hopefully in a long term, it will create benefit to our lives.
For Freedom
It is certain that the web can intrude private life as every move someone made on the web can be electronically tracked. However, the web still brings benefit in four aspects: freedom to think, to form and express idea independently; freedom to shape the identity, to be who we want to be; freedom as consumers to choose and buy products we want; and freedom to express through creating things that matter.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Chapter 5: How far will We-Think spread
We-Think might have a big impact on our economy in the future as it has improved the economy of developing countries such as China and India. "In 10 years from 1995, Chinese motorcycle production grew from 5 million to 15 million a year. By 2007, the Chinese industry accounted for half of global motorcycle production." (p136) The potential for collaborative approaches also change other sectors: manufacturing, public services and research.
Goldcorp Inc, spent $500,000 in prize to open a challenge to see whether the global community can locate goldmine which research had not thought of. The challenge attracted 1400 participants, many of whom are geologists, physicists, system specialists...28 of the winner had identified drilling sites. Using example of Goldcorp Inc, the author argue his way to prove open source of working can be applied to basic industries.
How We-Think affects public services? The author argued that libraries are model public institutions.They become more dispersed in a sense that library users would store more contents on their computers; thus make borrowing book much easier as books are digital and people allowed others to access their public material.
Open access also impact scientific research: data is organized and fully exploited if it is fully open to researchers. "Open access increases the impact of scientific research by speeding up the cycle and widening its reach: open access versions of articles tend to be cited by other reseachers on average 50% more than the same version in a subscription journal. Reseach spreads more quickly to more researchers who can then test the finding reported in a paper and develop new hypothesis."(p157)
Goldcorp Inc, spent $500,000 in prize to open a challenge to see whether the global community can locate goldmine which research had not thought of. The challenge attracted 1400 participants, many of whom are geologists, physicists, system specialists...28 of the winner had identified drilling sites. Using example of Goldcorp Inc, the author argue his way to prove open source of working can be applied to basic industries.
How We-Think affects public services? The author argued that libraries are model public institutions.They become more dispersed in a sense that library users would store more contents on their computers; thus make borrowing book much easier as books are digital and people allowed others to access their public material.
Open access also impact scientific research: data is organized and fully exploited if it is fully open to researchers. "Open access increases the impact of scientific research by speeding up the cycle and widening its reach: open access versions of articles tend to be cited by other reseachers on average 50% more than the same version in a subscription journal. Reseach spreads more quickly to more researchers who can then test the finding reported in a paper and develop new hypothesis."(p157)
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Chapter 4: The We-Think Business
The author introduces 5 aspects of economic life: how we work, consume, innovate, lead and own productive endeavor that We-Think could have an impact on.
Innovation
We used to believe that ideas and invention would come from special people, who worked at special place, and who would wear special clothes: white clothes in lab, smock in studio. Overtime, invention-driven innovation proved to be unproductive. Use pharmaceutical industry, Henry Ford's revolutionary moving assembly line, Werner Heisenberg's discussion with Neils Bohr, Thomas Edison as examples, it is proven alternative model of innovation has emerged as an open activity: "open innovation uses the web to take to scale a collaborative and social approach to creativity" (p95.) Scientist, educators, researchers in any field will have an option to create a "We-Think" approach to sharing and developing ideas.
Consumer
Before, we usually thought that consumers were the final link of the production process. Nowadays, people are no longer passive recipients, but they want to be participants in the creation of service. Take a look World of Warcraft as example: it is a social structure. Players create their characters, fight with monster and acquire point to pass through levels. The game was designed to be participative and social as there are many tasks to be taken, some of which would need collaboration of many players. Consumers also want to participate in designing new solution, such as the emergence of the mountain bike.
Work
If organizations want to get work done, usually they must follow 2 simple steps: motivate, co-ordinate and innovate their workers. However, corporations usuually find it hard to do all three at once. Open source of We-Think brings an inspirational model that would infiltrate organization to have better collaboration, and more progressively open. Such organizations that has started to applied the new model are Gore-Tex, British telecommunication behemoth, whose productivities have gone up 5% and quality up by 8%.
Leadership
Leaders give permissions and issue order to make sure resources are aligned behind their strategies. Instructions and permissions run down the chain of command while decisions are passed up for approval. Most traditional corporations work in this closed model of leadership. However, this model is illequipped to cope with demands. It is too slow because there are too many decisions waiting for approval. We-Think created a new leadership model that exercise in a different way from tradition corporations. Leaders will focus on making the norms and rules that many people can take responsibility over small parts; they tend to identify with the communities; such leader as Craige Newamark, Mark Shuttleworth, Sydney Brenner excercise inviting others to come forward with ideas.
Innovation
We used to believe that ideas and invention would come from special people, who worked at special place, and who would wear special clothes: white clothes in lab, smock in studio. Overtime, invention-driven innovation proved to be unproductive. Use pharmaceutical industry, Henry Ford's revolutionary moving assembly line, Werner Heisenberg's discussion with Neils Bohr, Thomas Edison as examples, it is proven alternative model of innovation has emerged as an open activity: "open innovation uses the web to take to scale a collaborative and social approach to creativity" (p95.) Scientist, educators, researchers in any field will have an option to create a "We-Think" approach to sharing and developing ideas.
Consumer
Before, we usually thought that consumers were the final link of the production process. Nowadays, people are no longer passive recipients, but they want to be participants in the creation of service. Take a look World of Warcraft as example: it is a social structure. Players create their characters, fight with monster and acquire point to pass through levels. The game was designed to be participative and social as there are many tasks to be taken, some of which would need collaboration of many players. Consumers also want to participate in designing new solution, such as the emergence of the mountain bike.
Work
If organizations want to get work done, usually they must follow 2 simple steps: motivate, co-ordinate and innovate their workers. However, corporations usuually find it hard to do all three at once. Open source of We-Think brings an inspirational model that would infiltrate organization to have better collaboration, and more progressively open. Such organizations that has started to applied the new model are Gore-Tex, British telecommunication behemoth, whose productivities have gone up 5% and quality up by 8%.
Leadership
Leaders give permissions and issue order to make sure resources are aligned behind their strategies. Instructions and permissions run down the chain of command while decisions are passed up for approval. Most traditional corporations work in this closed model of leadership. However, this model is illequipped to cope with demands. It is too slow because there are too many decisions waiting for approval. We-Think created a new leadership model that exercise in a different way from tradition corporations. Leaders will focus on making the norms and rules that many people can take responsibility over small parts; they tend to identify with the communities; such leader as Craige Newamark, Mark Shuttleworth, Sydney Brenner excercise inviting others to come forward with ideas.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Chapter 3: How We-Think works ( and not )
The author introduces five key principles that are the backbone for successful We-Think projects: Core, Contribution, Connection, Collaboration, Creation.
Using the process of unraveling the worm's genome, the author explains that the core to a successful research depends on the starting point, and the opening to interpretation: the worm's genome project, and "I Love Bee" as puzzles that only can be solved by the collaboration of people with different skills. Such collaboration can start from the inspiration and innovation that comes from conversation amongst people who combine skill, knowledge to solve a problem. "A good core starts a creative conversation and invites people to contribute" (p69.)
When people join together, using their skill, knowledge, to solve a problem, they form a creative community. For such community to be call "successful", it has to attract the right people with different ideas, skills and knowledge to contribute. The author explains in what way the community is truely successful by providing answer to four questions: "who contribute? what do they contribute? why do they do so? and how do they do it?
To answer the first question, the author argues that most innovative projects would start with intense collaboration of people or small groups that share the same passion, or want to solve the same problem. In order for the project to take off and attract a larger group, such community has to open out ti nire diverse contributors who would have and willing to share their knowledge. As people are sharing information, insights, testing out their hypothesis is vital to the innovation. In order for the testing become p
ossible, tools are needed. When tools are available ( through open source system), people start to become player, developer, participants. People are willing to do unpaid job because they want recognition; they want acknowledgement from others, and the job actually gives them a sense of achievement. Open source invites people to collaborate to create something new. Many insights, ideas are connected and combined to produce a final product. This leads to the next principle: connection.
When people with different ideas can connect and communicate with another, in the right way, this could produce a better result. Using the combination of 2 scientists, James Watson and Francis Crick, the author proved his point. Watson and Crick were trained with different background, yet when they combined their ideas through constant conversations, they unraveled the double helix structure of DNA. Therefore, a larger group that has more diverse perspectives are involved, the greater the benefit can be obtained from combining them. People with different perspectives would think and act in different ways. Thus when they make their contribution of idea, there are rules to govern. Use the open-source community that produces Ubuntu- version of Linux- the author proves that effective governance of creative community is a "lattice-work": anyone can see what is decided, anyone can make suggestions, but they way decisions are made is not democratic.
In conclusion, We-Think only works in certain conditions. The project should be exciting, and challenging enough so that people with the time, motivation can contribute. Its tools must be provided. There should be clear rules to govern the process, to separate good ideas from bad ones
Using the process of unraveling the worm's genome, the author explains that the core to a successful research depends on the starting point, and the opening to interpretation: the worm's genome project, and "I Love Bee" as puzzles that only can be solved by the collaboration of people with different skills. Such collaboration can start from the inspiration and innovation that comes from conversation amongst people who combine skill, knowledge to solve a problem. "A good core starts a creative conversation and invites people to contribute" (p69.)
When people join together, using their skill, knowledge, to solve a problem, they form a creative community. For such community to be call "successful", it has to attract the right people with different ideas, skills and knowledge to contribute. The author explains in what way the community is truely successful by providing answer to four questions: "who contribute? what do they contribute? why do they do so? and how do they do it?
To answer the first question, the author argues that most innovative projects would start with intense collaboration of people or small groups that share the same passion, or want to solve the same problem. In order for the project to take off and attract a larger group, such community has to open out ti nire diverse contributors who would have and willing to share their knowledge. As people are sharing information, insights, testing out their hypothesis is vital to the innovation. In order for the testing become p
ossible, tools are needed. When tools are available ( through open source system), people start to become player, developer, participants. People are willing to do unpaid job because they want recognition; they want acknowledgement from others, and the job actually gives them a sense of achievement. Open source invites people to collaborate to create something new. Many insights, ideas are connected and combined to produce a final product. This leads to the next principle: connection.When people with different ideas can connect and communicate with another, in the right way, this could produce a better result. Using the combination of 2 scientists, James Watson and Francis Crick, the author proved his point. Watson and Crick were trained with different background, yet when they combined their ideas through constant conversations, they unraveled the double helix structure of DNA. Therefore, a larger group that has more diverse perspectives are involved, the greater the benefit can be obtained from combining them. People with different perspectives would think and act in different ways. Thus when they make their contribution of idea, there are rules to govern. Use the open-source community that produces Ubuntu- version of Linux- the author proves that effective governance of creative community is a "lattice-work": anyone can see what is decided, anyone can make suggestions, but they way decisions are made is not democratic.
In conclusion, We-Think only works in certain conditions. The project should be exciting, and challenging enough so that people with the time, motivation can contribute. Its tools must be provided. There should be clear rules to govern the process, to separate good ideas from bad ones
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Chapter 2: The Roots of We-Think
In previous chapter
, the author made a strong argument that the web matters so much because it allows human to share and to be creative; however, that is not enough. The web is potent because it mixes the new with the very old ideas, participants have to find way
s to collaborate, to build on what others are doing in order to create more valuable, complex products. That is the focus of this chapter.
Using example of Arsenal Football Club Blog, the author tries to explain how the web 2.0 changes the way people relate to information and the media. On the blog, people can freely post comments, or start conversation on subject about which they are passionate; whereas on the newspaper, or television, there are not enough space for all the reader interests. The web 2.0 encourages the community to start conversation. What vital about the web 2.0 is that
within 14 years, there are 61 million active sites and million of people are content creator, of which 70% are teenager.(p31) Since information are produced in large quantities, it's become very difficult to navigate. This problem is solved by Google's algorithm, which described in detail on page 32. Google search engine is a analogy to how people can collaborate to create some order of the sea of shared information.
Social-networking sites such as blogs, youtube, flickr, myspace, facebook, bebo make easy for people to network around shared interests, but they do not produce collective intelligence. Social networks allow people to connect, to contribute their interests. Moving on to different examples, Doug Engelbart, Stewart Brand, Fred Moore, Lee Felsenstein, Illich, the author proves that the web new culture - a hybrid of the geek, the academic, the hippie and the peasant-produces a social form of creativity that many participants can have capacity to think and work and experiment together.
, the author made a strong argument that the web matters so much because it allows human to share and to be creative; however, that is not enough. The web is potent because it mixes the new with the very old ideas, participants have to find way
s to collaborate, to build on what others are doing in order to create more valuable, complex products. That is the focus of this chapter.Using example of Arsenal Football Club Blog, the author tries to explain how the web 2.0 changes the way people relate to information and the media. On the blog, people can freely post comments, or start conversation on subject about which they are passionate; whereas on the newspaper, or television, there are not enough space for all the reader interests. The web 2.0 encourages the community to start conversation. What vital about the web 2.0 is that
within 14 years, there are 61 million active sites and million of people are content creator, of which 70% are teenager.(p31) Since information are produced in large quantities, it's become very difficult to navigate. This problem is solved by Google's algorithm, which described in detail on page 32. Google search engine is a analogy to how people can collaborate to create some order of the sea of shared information.Social-networking sites such as blogs, youtube, flickr, myspace, facebook, bebo make easy for people to network around shared interests, but they do not produce collective intelligence. Social networks allow people to connect, to contribute their interests. Moving on to different examples, Doug Engelbart, Stewart Brand, Fred Moore, Lee Felsenstein, Illich, the author proves that the web new culture - a hybrid of the geek, the academic, the hippie and the peasant-produces a social form of creativity that many participants can have capacity to think and work and experiment together.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
chapter 1: You are what you share.
The first chapter explains the advantages and disadvantages of the widespread web; the creation of the web opens a new world, new culture which infiltrates and shapes human life; it is the source for spreading democracy, knowledge and sharing ideas. The development of the web hence has brought a vast capacity for solving shared problems by combining inteligence, insights of millions of people who are connected to the web.
Besides the valuables the web can bring to human race, it has also risen the fear for security, such described as "tool for stalkers, paedophile, terrorists and criminal to organize for purposes beyond our control." (p3) The more connected we are to the web, the more vulnerable we are likely to be attacked by hackers, viruses. The argument further shows that the web will corrode what is valuable in our culture, destroy established business models that invest in talent.
The web development is reaching to a new phase, where we shall gradually be able to see how it influences our society. If we are able to control, and find ways to work together, the potential of the web is remarkable as it allows for the expansion in individual participation, and constant circulation of ideas. If not, the web could lead to an anarchy.
The author further emphasized the positive side of the creation of the web, about how we can make the most of the web's potential to combine our ideas, resources to expand everyone's prosperity, to allow us to participate collaboratively and organize our intelligence.
Using a website "ilovebee.com" and "wikipedia" as examples, the author made a strong analysis that a mass of individual with different informations, skills, point of view and backgrounds can co-ordinate, combine ideas, and work collaboratively to solve the main puzzle.
Questions and points to ponder:
In the example "I Love Bees", the author wrote: "So if some ingenious west coast designers can create the conditions in which thousands of people around the world collaborate to solve a trivial puzzle, could we do something similar to defeat bird flu, tackle global warming, keep community safe, provide support for disaster victims, lend and borrow money, conduct political and policy debate, teach and learn, design and even make physical products?"(p12) This statement is misleading in a sense that the trivial puzzle is created within virtual world, thus there is a solution to the puzzle; participants can discuss, share ideas, information freely. Regardless of the conclusion, at some time, the creator would give a hint, thus giving a new direction to the discussion. Whereas political debate, natural disasters cannot be solved solely by discussion.
If we take bird flu as one example, we don't have the vaccine as solution for the problem, but it is more a local responsibility. We can help to prevent the flu to be spread by providing researchers, and equipments. As for political and policy debate, we can discuss all we want, but the final decision is made based on what would be benificial to the control parties, organizations.
Moreover, the virtual puzzle doesn't affect benificial parties, whereas real world problems have major affect on political parties, organizations, and individuals.
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