Sam Rose:
What if I invited you to write an essay, record a song, or make a movie, and then post it at my website and have it served totally free? What if the only catch was that I would retain full and exclusive rights to reuse your content in any way that I see fit, and that if I made any money off of my reuse of your content, you were not entitled to any of it? Would you agree to this?
What if I invited you to work and collaborate with my group to explore and research in your areas of interest? Surely, this would be an exciting opportunity to share and learn and grow. But, what if I made you sign a non-disclosure agreement that prevented you and everyone in the group from talking about or re-using anything that the group produced without my express permission, and then only in the way that I dictate? What if I also put in that agreement that I retain full commercial rights over our collaboration? Would you still collaborate with me? What if I did not create this agreement, but later threatened you with legal action and claimed all of our collaborations as my Intellectual Property when you decided to try and use our collaborations, or something that emerged from them, in away that I decided I don’t like? How would you then ever be sure of what is and is not “ok” to use or reuse?
What if I created a collaborative project, but I decided to be the total authority over that project? What if I invited you to collaborate with me, but when you disagreed with me one time in a way that I didn’t care for, I had structured the rules of the project so that I could kick you out of it, and there is nothing that you or anyone could do about it? Is this an inviting proposal for you? Why not?
If you do not like my above proposals for a collaborative project, then perhaps you can offer some form of counter -proposal? Is there some other way to collaborate other than having everything totally controlled by me? Please, someone help me. It’s becoming harder and harder to manage all of this stuff when I alone control and make the decisions about everything. Plus, I originally wanted to collaborate with other people to broaden my vision by looking at things through multiple perspectives. But, for some reason, with my rules and ways of doing things, everything just keeps coming to the same conclusion (which is my conclusion).
So, can anyone out there suggest a better way of creating a system of collaboration?
as for the a system of collaboration, i agree with James Surowiecki (author of The Wisdom of Crowds). any system that will have the qualities which can make the crowd “smarter” will do.
“Under what circumstances is the crowd smarter?
There are four key qualities that make a crowd smart. It needs to be diverse, so that people are bringing different pieces of information to the table. It needs to be decentralized, so that no one at the top is dictating the crowd’s answer. It needs a way of summarizing people’s opinions into one collective verdict. And the people in the crowd need to be independent, so that they pay attention mostly to their own information, and not worrying about what everyone around them thinks. “
i say the architecture of Web 2.0 fits the bill quite perfectly
~C (for Collaborative Intelligence)
Sam, I can’t tell if you are being at all facetious. Funny how accurately you describe the dilemma of orange as it sputters on fumes having consumed it all, blown its wad, pumping the accelerator for all its worth, but still rolling back down that damned hill.
How can one become king of the mountain when the mountain is asymptotic, and escape velocity approaches the speed of light (or infinity, whichever comes first)?
Maybe the answer is to throw it in reverse and accelerate downhill hoping to catch the next wave. Isn’t that kind of what Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have teamed up to do? Give the whole thing away, and try to make it count. Hoarding life only gets you half the way there. If we can learn to oscillate at the right frequency, giving, receiving, giving, receiving, maybe we can add enough energy to escape our particular gravity well.
Pardon my poetic license, I’m still buzzing from seeing “A Scanner Darkly” last night. But this question has been burning for me for a very long time. How do we transition to having it all by giving it all away?
Embrace the unknown, and stop clutching at control. Current power grabbers thinking they are kings of the mountains, but these are truly just molehills, and they are just five-year olds clutching the peak with both hands as they scream “mine, Mine, MINE!”
Okay, have it. I’ll just wander over here and see what I can find. Isn’t that the way we discover that there are infinite mountains, hills and knolls available.
What about voluntary reciprocal philanthropy. How about if we start by tithing 10% of our funds and 25% of our time, and let’s just see what kind of cyclone we can whip up. The only guideline, your giving must be orthogonal to your receiving. No washing each others backs. Someone new must be the beneficiary of your new wealth.
Perhaps it doesn’t seem very pragmatic, but I bet it will be interesting.
- David
well that is a interesting proposition. I liked the way your post naughtily teased the reader. It looks like this is an answer to a previous question on defining what closed integral might convey.
The examples you list in your post above seem to refer to the following : 1) You Tube (not completely sure on this but heard their EULA has some stuff in it similar to what you are saying 2) The Record Industry or working for a company and 3) possibly all of us as we can edit each others work
Well the first two are legal agreements backed up by verbal….So can cover yourself with a Creative Commons license of the appropriate type which defines copyright and its (re)use by all others. Then there is the use of collective filtering for for instance writing a book. A wiki is a platform allowing for multiple authors to publish as an ensemble. This would allow for collaborative generation of works (written material, events, etc). So Sam as i know you for a bit, you already sneakily knew the answer but showed the pitfalls of our inheritance……
draconian (inflexible copyright laws)
old ways of authorship often done alone.
james
Thanks for the repsonses everyone. My little rant above is kind of extreme, though I have witnessed of real life instances of all of the examples I give above. I really liked Frank\’s idea, because it it contributes to frames of reference for building alternative futures.
C4Chaos, I like your post that you linked to here: http://coolmel.zaadz.com/blog/2006/5/collaborative_intelligence_and_the_numbskull_factor
Intersting stuff.
David Swedlow, that’s interesting, too. Have you ever looked at David Pollard’s ideas about how to solve some of these problems (how to potentially replace the current economy)? http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2005/12/06.html#a1364
James: I think you definitely are right with the examples you give. I really was asking or hoping that someone might be able to suggest a different wy to do things. I am partial to the Creative Commons system of liscencing, for instance, but that doesn’t have to be the *only* way (although it is a really good way).
Also, I thought I would say that my examples above are basically an extreme. There are of course times when it could be useful to keep proprietary control of Intellectual Property. And, there are times when Non-Disclosure agreements may be useful or desierable. Especially if you are not planning on making commons-based resource. However, the types of closed/control schemes that I talk about in the post above tend to destroy self-organized commons,a nd to limit the growth of them.
(In case it doesn’t display my name, this is Sara Ross. Some posts are without names, I don’t want mine to be one of them
.)
It is late, I’m weary, I couldn’t get logged into the blog, I’m keeping this short tonight.
Sam, the “dilemma” you posed in your opening post is a classic, an excellent example of what I call a complex issue. In your scenario, the concern lies in the particular domain of agreements. Whatever the domain, complex issues need more complex attention than customary approaches can ever address (as you exquisitely illustrate!)
You said you earnestly hoped someone could make a contribution to resolving such a dilemma. I’m grateful you posted it, because of its concreteness and more limited or managable scope (as compared to monster social issues).
All I have the energy to write tonight is this placemarker…that the process I have talked about for years (formerly “the integral public practice,” currently named The Integral Process For Working On Complex Issues”) is for, well, working on complex issues. Some require more layers of work than others. The one you describe is less layered than larger issues, but the attention it needs is essentially the same kind. I don’t want to repeat here stuff that I’ve written elsewhere, and I don’t want to presume how much you’d want to invest in this. If you wanted to, we could use the upcoming forum James is going to add to the site here, and others could participate too. This blog software wouldn’t be conducive. No pressure, just wanted to jump in with an fyi.