I have a tendency at certain times to avoid the unknown. A predisposition in some sense which I see reflected in my fear of the “out there” of this world. I justify myself saying that “surely, I have gotten along thus far without such knowledge, why must I have it now”? In this, I fear most, I am not alone.
In reading the first chapter of Wikinomics, I see my fears of technology; my fear is that I might not understand or lack the ability to grasp the convergence of economic and social concerns that are already changing the world, as I understand it, forever. I think this is good. With the divisiveness that plagues our national discourse these days, it seems to me that encouraging peer collaboration could one day obviate the world views that divide us to such a noteworthy degree.
The sub-title to this book may as well have been “How Everybody is Changing Everything”. I had heard of Linux before, but not being much of a techie, I didn’t really understand the advantages of one operating system over another. I just knew you couldn’t buy a Linux operating system at Office Depot. Learning about the genesis of Linux, my faith in intrinsic motivation is strengthened. Clearly, Linus worked primarily out of intrinsic motivation, rather than from a desire for traditional external rewards, like money, copyrights, and of course recognition from one’s peers. But for many, I think, external rewards have greater awareness and acceptance among contemporary workers, given the long stretch ahead of poor national and local economic forecasts. Clearly though, peer-sharing and mass collaboration tap into mankind’s deeper desire for meaning-making as Maslow posited in the last century or as Pink asserted in his book “Drive” just last year.
That said, the fact that Linux drew so many “peers” to share better solutions and upgrades is, in my opinion, a modern economic marvel. So much of the workforce has had to re-train, re-learn and re-invent in order to compete in an economy that has shifted from a manufacturing based to a knowledge-based platform. But things are changing so quickly in terms of technology that if workers do not continue to re-train and re-invent, they will find themselves considered “un-skilled labor”. But I digress.
Peer collaboration and peer-sharing has had profound effects on the way we gather and store information. Whether a study-group creates a Wikipage so they can all collaborate on a class project, or millions of authors, researchers, and private citizens collaborate to create the world’s most extensive on-line encyclopedia that has now put Encyclopedia Britannica out of business; the prognosis is equally profound.
Further evidence of the remarkable impact of peer-sharing is exemplified by the recently reported development of Wikileaks. This site has gathered an extraordinary level of high-security- clearance documents from the US Government and as allowed public access to all of the nation’s so-called secrets. The question in my mind, “Is this a good thing or not”? If the information is available to the average U.S. citizen, then is it not also available to any terrorist group or country that is other-wise unfriendly to U.S. interests? Wikileaks begs the question “how much is too much transparency?
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