Omar Martinez Blog #2/Mass Collaboration

     Personally, I found Rheingold's idea of "mass collaboration" to be interesting and true. We as people tend to do a lot more together and to accomplish things by cooperating than we are able to do alone. If we focus on a certain topic, communicate, collaborate, and coordinate as a group, we are able to process  much more. Especially, because we live in the digital age. The use of technology allows people not only to cooperate but to do so without having to be right next to each other or even in the same place or country. We can utilize the online community(s) to expand our knowledge, understanding, build new ideas, and expand on ideas or problems which are currently hard to solve.

     Additionally, because we can use mass collaboration and "have gained access to digital tools that enable us to share what we know and aggregate small contributions into large knowledge repositories, a new level of collective intelligence is possible" (Levy et al 160.) Hence, Levy adds that since we have the world wide web, and places such as twitter, wiki, blogs, and online communities within the web. We are able unlike before to give small tidbits of our own knowledge to large pools of people or spaces on the world wide web. Within these spaces, people other than ourselves are able to make their own contributions. Thus adding so much more information and creating a source of intelligence which would not have been possible without the cooperation, and collaboration between numerous amounts of people through the medium of their computers and the world wide web.

 

     Furthermore, this idea of mass collaboration and a collective intelligence not only allows access to greater sources of knowledge. But allows people to construct a sense of trust among one another and others. For mass collaboration to succeed, it is important for people to "know who to trust and not to trust" (Dunbar et al 149.) We have to build trust in order to have successful cooperation and to build the collective intelligence. If we as people do not trust or confide in those with who we wish to build knowledge. Then no constructive communication, collaboration, and organized development of information can be done.

 

     Thus, the idea of mass collaboration is an extremely important and useful one. Especially, if it occurs in this electronic day and age. With technology running rampant all over our lives and having the youth ingrained with technology since their little. For example, giving children an IPad and/or laptop. They are already learning to use technology but are working on making their own YouTube channels, twitter accounts, and blogs. Already they are building upon and working on mass collaboration. It relies on us to teach ourselves and the youth how to utilize cooperation, and collaboration to build upon their knowledge and add to the collective intelligence in a positive manner. But mass collaboration permits us to as a species grow and resolve issues that we could not have resolved alone.