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

1. Wikinomics: the era of
collabora3ve produc3on
MAC281
robert.jewi1@sunderland.ac.uk
1

2. 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
2

3. 1: Tradi3onal forms of collabora3ve ac3on
20th century
•
Large scale projects
•
Typically hierarchical
•
Top‐down model
•
Typically state or market led
•
– (see Shirky, 2008)
3

4. 4

5. Government
steering group
Project lead
(eg IBM)
DVLA Passports HMCR NI
NHS
Consultants Consultants Consultants Consultants Consultants
Doc control Doc control Doc control Doc control Doc control
Tech roll out Tech roll out Tech roll out Tech roll out Tech roll out
Test Test Test Test Test
5

6. UK broadband network
Source: UK Govt Digital Britain report, January 2009
6

7. Government led?
7

8. Market led?
8

9. 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
9

10. 2: New forms of collabora3on
• 21st century
• Mass collabora<on
• Democra<c par<cipa<on
10

11. 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
11

12. 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
12

13. Crowdsourcing?
• Outsourcing of ideas to a large
undefined group
– open calls for help
– the hive mind
– collec<ve problem solving
– cheap!
13

14. Wikinomics?
• Peer produc<on improves business
– openess
– peering
– sharing
– ac<ng globally
14

15. 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)
15

16. 16

17. 3: Case study 1 ‐ IBM and Linux
• 1991: Linus Torvalds
• Inspired by Richard
Stallman and the
GNU free somware
movement
17

18. • ‘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
18

19. • 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
19

20. 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
20

21. Popular open source soMware
See h1p://sourceforge.net/ 21

22. 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
22

23. 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
•
23

24. 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
24

25. 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
25

26. Cri3cisms?
• Reliability?
26

27. Examples of collec3ve produc3on
BitTorrent swarms
•
Second Life
•
Distributed compu<ng
•
Google search
•
Facebook
•
Li1leBigPlanet
•
27

28. Conclusion
28

29. • 21st century is the era of mass
collabora<on
• Collabora<on benefits business
and culture alike
• The crowd is a resource?
• Democra<sing force?
29

30. Ques3ons
• Do the benefits of crowdsourcing outweigh
the problems?
• Is the future one of mass collabora<on?
30

31. 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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