review : WE-THINK, Mass innovation not mass production, by Charles Leadbeater

WE-THINK, Mass innovation not mass production, by Charles Leadbeater

„The web´s underlying the culture of sharing, decentralisation and democracy makes it an ideal platform for groups to self-organise, combining their ideas and know-how, to create together games, encyklopaedians, software, social networks, video-sharing sites or entire paralell universes. (WE-THINK, p 7.)

What is impressive on this book is fact that, the draft version was published on-line for people to make a comment, they have a possibility to change a text (wiki version). Result in 35 days, 150 comment, 250 blogs, 200 emails, 65 000 hits by google and very important fact, that sales not suffer by this. This is perfect presentation of way how to combine professional and amateur collaborative ways of working. The point of this book how author saying is to have a conversation. You can find a 4 minute video on-line about this book in YouTube and also on author webpage.

History of this project is begining with post/pre/anti industrial culture. We can see in first chapter a lot of examples of successful projects like wiki (wikipedia) and also opensources project (LINUX), project FunTwo etc. Author using a lot of comparisons and in book is a lot connections with history (Newton, Descartes, Einstein,..) He is describing all this projects in details. That is good in one way, but in other it makes a book a chaotical, disorganized and very boring. 35 pages like preface, wtf is this?? What I like here, in this book?? That is a good question. I like especially author´s dividing internet users according to their opinions on interner to 4 groups :

- positive

- negative

- impact is already here

- mainly good for us and good but can turn bad.

Also very good was a dividing of models of WE-THINK project in to 3 groups. And I must agree.

Low model- Flickr, Youtube, Blogging

Medium- Social newtworking and social tagging (Technorati, delicious)

High- World of Warcraft and worm´s genom project

I like mainly two chapters, which are describing in next lines.

In chapter „HOW WE-THINK WORKS (AND NOT)“ author describing of the most famous project of the mass collaboration in cyberspace, project of maping of the genom and what is most important here is his vision of effective self governance. He see this success in making of decision in a small groups.

In chapter „THE WE- THINK BUSINESS” author describing of successful project like World of Warcraft (point- 15$ subsciptions), The Sims (now in third version!) and saying all we need is motivate, co-ordinate and innovative. It is kind of recipe for a success of massive cooperation. We can see a clear difference in the examples- H. Ford model = mass production, Linus Toralds project = mass innovation. I think is very difficult to make a profit if we are using model “WE-THINK” in everyday life, but author see a success in the open/closed model of business and he describing impacts on sectors of life.

“If people with different skills cooperating together 1+1 means 12. ”

In the book is a lot of examples from countries all around the world (Germany, Estonia, Ukraine, Georgia, Yemen, Philippines,..) what I really like, because in my previous which I was reading and commenting author describes only situation in UK and USA and the main title was ” WHITE NOISE, An A-Z of the contradictions in cyberculture”. Yes cyberculture you can find only in UK and USA. J In the end of the book author describing light (evolution, democracy, working for people goods) and dark sides (paedophils,terrorism, censorship) of many various project applications, but conclusion is that, this project have much more positives than negatives. Sometimes I think that, the book is pretty optimistic. WE-THINK idea have a big problem with current capitalistic principles of life, and people still thinking about material matters, so we can say, some possibilities are here, but only some.

I read also the SZU blog, and I think that is very good (especially I like her comparison book with cookbook ) but, sometimes is little bit pessimistic. I think that success of project like this always up to people, to decide if they are able to change the way how they thinking and we can´t lose the hope for change. And we can see that is possible (open source systems is Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Argentina), but I guess this countries thinking maybe more about the people goods, than the others.

In the end, some interested blogs about the book you can find here (Authors blog, someone´s blog, one visual blog, Szu blog ) and other review here (Indipendent, Telegraph,Guardian), oh by the way if you have any question, comments,.. you can contact the author by e-mail charlie@charlesleadbeater.net. That is what I calling „mass cooperation“ in real conditions!