CEM210 - We-Think

While researching about technology and culture I found a book in the library called We-Think by Charles Leadbeater, its about the internet being ‘collaborative creativity’ and about encouraging sharing ideas on the web.

Leadbeater thinks that the Internet is such a useful tool for creativity and looks at the positive side of the Internet, the ways it can be used to build creativity, not destroy it with technology.

‘Thanks to the web, millions of people can have their say” Via blog, videos, and websites, there are so many ways people can share their ideas.

People all over the world in different continent can work together, without even meeting.

Charles Leadbeater is a business and political adviser as well as author, writing about social enterprize, the internet, and knowledge driven economy.

Leadbeater talks about the web being a creative outlet where people can “pool their ideas together” he goes on to say “creating mass innovation”. What he is saying makes sense to me and it is already happening with all over the Internet, but he is talking about how everybody imputing to create a mass creative product.

The book talks a lot about Wikipedia, how it has “shared creativity and responsible self goverence” and how public encyclopaedias should be encouraged and used by everyone.

Jimmy Wale the founder says “Wikipedia is: an anarchy because no one is in control of its content, an meritocracy because the best ideas win out, a democracy because people who have been involved in the community for longer have a higher standing in the community, and a monarchy because Jimmy Wale is like the King.

Leadbeater writes that Wikipedia is about anybody and everybody collaborating together to make a resource available for everyone. Leadbeater has a theory that is everybody was to share everything that no one would need to pay to view or hide content. But for this to work everybody would need to share instead of some people sharing and other not. He states that “We are what we share, not what you own”

Some important questions are raised in the book. Like ‘How do we protect what is private’? This is such a an important question because we want to share our work but publishing it on the internet lets anybody access to it, which leads to the question ‘are we safe sharing?’  how do we know who is using or copying our work?  If everybody was sharing everything on the web how ‘would people make people earn a living on the net?’