Massive/enhanced collaboration is such a new phenomena that we still do not know what it can really do for us. Are Wikipedia and Couchsurfing a small organizations because they have very few staff? Or big, because many people collaborate? Is the authenticity of peer production a value in itself? Can we mine local knowledge, by creating p2p call centers? How can we build trust/reputation online? What else can we do? Watch Banyak’s US Now and participate in the discussion!
in May 2009 many of “us” are getting social media and do believe that “web 2.0″ has the potential to be a game changer. However, the critique of the new way of organizing collective action is to be taken seriously. Some of the points policy makers from Austria, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, and the United States have voiced to me in the last weeks are:
- in my country/company, labor laws do not allow government officials to work at 10 pm at night and if the write an email from home, we have a serious problem.
- in my country/company, journalists do not get social media, so we had to buy them 100 copies of Clay Shirky’s Here comes everybody (2008) so that they would understand our politicians point.
- in my country/company, maneuvering the tension between privacy and transparency is so complicated, we would not be able to profit of increased transparency.
- in my country/company the politicians do not get what they could gain from increased transparency, collaboration, and participation.
What are the main objections you have heard in the last months? What are your counter-arguments? What will happen?
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