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Slides used in the Level 2 Cyberculture lecture on mass collaboration. some formatting errors have occurred in the upload. Supporting blog post: http://www.remedialthoughts.com/2009/03/era-of-mass-collaboration.html
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Overview
1. Tradi<onal forms of collabora<ve ac<on 2. New forms of collabora<on
3. Case study 1: IBM and Linux
4. Case study 2: Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia
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1: Tradi3onal forms of collabora3ve ac3on
• 20th century • Large scale projects • Typically hierarchical • Top‐down model
• Typically state or market led – (see Shirky, 2008)
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Government steering group
Project lead (eg IBM)
Passports HMCR NI DVLA NHS
Doc control
Consultants
Doc control
Consultants
Doc control
Consultants
Doc control
Consultants Consultants
Doc control
Tech roll out Tech roll out Tech roll out Tech roll out Tech roll out
Test Test Test Test Test
UK broadband network
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Source: UK Govt Digital Britain report, January 2009
Government led?
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Market led?
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Common elements
• Hierarchal networks func<on in a top‐down manner
• Stakeholders come together in temporary networks to work towards the projects comple<on, before separa<ng
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2: New forms of collabora3on
• 21st century • Mass collabora<on
• Democra<c par<cipa<on
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Wisdom of crowds?
• Crowds be1er at decision making than small groups of experts – Francis Galton – Plymouth, 1906 – Weight of oxen
– Crowd more accurate taken as a whole than individual experts
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We‐think?
• Sharing of informa<on via Internet – improves crea<vity
– improves ideas – improves innova<on – improves democracy
– h1p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiP79vYsgo
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Crowdsourcing?
• Outsourcing of ideas to a large undefined group – open calls for help – the hive mind – collec<ve problem solving
– cheap!
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Wikinomics?
• Peer produc<on improves business – openess – peering – sharing – ac<ng globally
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Organising without organisa3ons
• New social tools reconfigured behaviour: – costs shrink – par<cipa<on increases – ‘groups that operate with a birthday party’s informality and a mul<na<onal’s scope’ (Shirky, 2008: 48)
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3: Case study 1 ‐ IBM and Linux
• 1991: Linus Torvalds • Inspired by Richard Stallman and the GNU free somware movement
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• ‘Over <me an informal organiza<on emerged to manage ongoing development of the somware that con<nues to harness inputs from thousands of volunteer programmers. Because it was reliable and free, Linux became a useful opera<ng system for computers hos<ng Web servers, and ul<mately databases, and today many companies consider Linux an enterprise somware keystone’ – Tapsco1 & Williams, 2008: 24
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• 1998: IBM join open source community • Harness the power of the crowd at a frac<on of the cost
• Opened up their propriety code to the community
• Inspected, hacked, modded, developed
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The power of the crowd?
• IBM spends about $100 million per year on Linux development.
• If Linux community puts in $1 billion of effort and even half of that is useful to IBM customers, the company gets $500 million of somware development for their ini<al investment – Tapsco1 & Williams, 2008: 83
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Popular open source soMware
21 See h1p://sourceforge.net/
4: Case study 2 ‐ Wikipedia
• 2000: Jimmy Wales & Larry Sanger founded Nupedia – High quality online encyclopaedia – Managed, wri1en & reviewed by experts – Voluntary basis – 7 stage review process – 1 year in: $120000 spent; only 24 ar<cles
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• Added ‘wiki’ somware to Nupedia site • Invented by Ward Cunningham in 1995
• Much faster to post and edit ar<cles
• Nupedia advisory board rejected it
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Wikipedia in figures
• 2001: 15,000 ar<cles • 2009: 2.7 million+ ar<cles • 1 million+ registered users • 100,000 users posted 10+ ar<cles • 75,000 regular editors • 5,000 hardcore maintain site • 5 paid staffers – See Tapsco1 & Williams, 2008: 72; h1p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/About_Wikipedia
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Collabora3ve produc3on
• “Why do people play somball? It’s fun, it’s a social ac<vity … We are gathering together to build this resource that will be made available to all the people of the world for free. That’s a goal people can get behind.” – Jimmy Wales cited in Tapsco1 & Williams, 2008: 72
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Cri3cisms?
• Reliability?
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Examples of collec3ve produc3on
• BitTorrent swarms • Second Life • Distributed compu<ng
• Google search • Facebook • Li1leBigPlanet
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Conclusion
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• 21st century is the era of mass collabora<on
• Collabora<on benefits business and culture alike
• The crowd is a resource? • Democra<sing force?
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Ques3ons
• Do the benefits of crowdsourcing outweigh the problems?
• Is the future one of mass collabora<on?
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Sources and reading • Digital Britain report, January 2009,
h1p://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcas<ng/5631.aspx • Jeff Howe, 2008, Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving
the Future of Business, London: Random House Business Books. • Andrew Keen, 2008, The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is
killing our culture and assaulAng our economy, London: Nicholas Brearly Publishing
• Charles Leadbe1er 2008, We‐Think: Mass innovaAon, not mass‐producAon, London: Profile Books Ltd.
• Clay Shirky, 2008: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without OrganizaAons, London: Allen Lane.
• James Surowiecki, 2005, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few, London: Abacus.
• Don Tapsoc1 & Anthony D. Williams, 2008, Wikinomics: How Mass CollaboraAon Changes Everything, London: Atlan<c Books
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