The Awesome Web Company

I heard Charles Leadbeater speak about his new book at the British Library last night.

We Think explores how the web is changing our world, creating a culture in which more people than ever can participate, share and collaborate, ideas and information.

The talk was entitled ‘We think: will the web be good for us?’ (here it is on Upcoming) and it focussed on how creative expression is changing in light of social media, open-source, creative commons etc.

It was an extremely interesting evening and it complemented the recent Clay Shirky talk beautifully.

Here are the (edited) scribbles from my notebook:

Innovation
Innovation happens in groups – most innovation is the result of a far more collaborative process than it may at first appear. The technology behind the iPod was developed around a century ago (Me: eh?).

ilovebees
ilovebees.com was used as an example of group innovation. It’s too complicated to explain in detail here but please consult wikipedia for the full low down.

The gist is that a website was created as a viral marketing tool promoting the Halo 2 video game.

The website contained GPS co-ordinates but no explanation as to why or what. People visiting the website worked out that there were a series of payphones at the GPS co-ordinates. What began was a treasure hunt involving these payphones and the web. Eventually payphones located all around the world were involved in the game. People were given messages down the phone line and they had to communicate them to the other people playing the game. Sometimes in only a few seconds messages had to be circulated round the globe.

What’s remarkable about this example – and the reason it was mentioned – is because of the complexity of the organisation of the group. There was no leader, nobody told people they had to figure out the GPS co-ordinates even, it just happened.

Craftsmanship
The web may represent a mass return to ancient ways of working. The notion of work as creative expression is actually a pretty archaic approach as a general approach in the work place.

If you consider Linux coders for example, they are a bit like bee keepers or iron mongers – these are specialist crafts that require specialist skills but also these people LOVE what they do; their jobs are their craft, their vocation.

Me: My work has always been my vocation so it’s hard for me to see how this is something new

Collaboration and creativity
Notions of artistic creativity are brought into question when creation is collaborative. Some things cannot be created collaboratively. Imagine open source poetry – ‘it would be awful’.

Me: Actually, open source poetry could be really interesting. Hmmm [hear those cogs begin to whir]

Is this kind of collaborative creativity a predominantly first-world thing? It’s certainly possible that the most radical experiments involving collaborative tools (via mobile phone of course) could take place in the developing world (this is one example of that, are there any others?).

Don’t make me think
The web doesn’t appear to be a place for people to think together because we tend to join together with like-minded people. I wonder what we can do about that?

Content free for all or lock down?
The question we are going to face on every project from now on is should this be opened up (open source)? Or should it be locked down?

The corporation approach is to keep their work locked down, unavailable to the masses. But ultimately this approach probably won’t succeed. Brian Eno agrees.