Official website-
http://www.charlesleadbeater.net/home.aspx
Notes of video of 'We Think' explaining his book.
- Internet has allowed the audience to have 'their say' through websites, blogs, wiki.
- 'Ideas take to life when they are shared'.
- New ideas 'usually comes from conversation'.
- Creates a mass conversations, leading to mass innovation.
- '20th Century = mass production for mass conversation'.
- '21st Century = mass innovation' leading to more ideas than ever before.
- First signs of this: Wikipedia, Linux, Oh My News, Slashbox.
- 'Mass innovation comes from communities.
- 'Its like building a birds nest, where everyone leaves their piece'.
- People want to socialise and get recognition for the work they do.
- Motto for this generation - WE THINK THEREFORE WE ARE.
- Good for democracy as more people have a voice.
- Equality because knowledge can be set free to help people who need it but cannot pay.
- freedom because more people will know what it will be like to be creative.
- UTOPIA view.
- 'in the past you were what you owned, now you are what you share'.
Information on website:
- 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.
- Ideas take life when they are shared. That is why the web is such a potent platform for creativity and innovation.
- It's also at the heart of why the web should be good for : democracy, by giving more people a voice and the ability to organise themselves; freedom, by giving more people the opportunity to be creative and equality, by allowing knowledge to be set free.
- But sharing also brings with it dilemmas.
- It leaves us more open to abuse and invasions of privacy.
- Participation is not always a good thing: it can just create a cacophony.
- Collaboration is sustained and reliable only under conditions which allow for self organisation.
- Everywhere we turn there will be struggles between people who want to freely share - music, films, ideas, information - and those who want to control this activity, either corporations who want to make money or governments who fear debate and democracy. This conflict between the rising surge of mass collaboration and attempts to retain top down control will be one of the defining battles of our time, from Communist China, to Microsoft's battle with open source and the music industry's desperate rearguard action against the web.
Notes on Chapter One...
- Thanks to the web more people than ever can exercise their right to free speech, reviving democracy where it is tired and inspiring its emergence in authoritarian societies from Burma, to Vietnam and China.
- More people than ever have
- basic tools which allow them a degree of creativity.
- Ideally the web should be spread the freedom to do express ourselves
- creatively. Yet the web also expands the scope for surveillance, not just by the
- state and corporations, but also by our peers and friends.
- On the one hand the web
- is the source of our most ambitious hopes for spreading democracy, knowledge
- and creativity.
- But the web is also the source of some of our most lurid fears: it has already
- become a tool for stalkers, paedophiles, terrorists and criminals to organise
- shadow networks for shadowy purposes beyond our control.
- The
- web enables small, dispersed groups to collaborate in ways that were previously
- impossible.
- The more connected we are the more opportunities for collaboration
- there should be, but the more vulnerable we also become.
- The web’s critics argue that it will corrode much of what is valuable in our
- culture, which rests on learning and expertise, professionalism and specialism.
- That web’s underlying culture of sharing, decentralisation and democracy, makes
- the it an ideal platform for groups to self organise, combining their ideas and
- know how, to create together.
- We Think’s organisational recipe rests of a balance of three ingredients between
- participation, recognition and collaboration.
Notes on Chapter Two...
- The web with its much lower costs allows a committed and knowledgeable enthusiast to connect to his fellow fans. Web 2.0 differs from earlier more static versions of the web, though, in that it encourages this community to have a conversation.
- The most obvious example is Google’s search system which works by treating a link from one website to another as a vote.
- Social networking sites work when they foster a spirit of collaborative self governance.
- Wiki is Hawaiian for quick but it is also an acronym for “What I Know Is.”
- We Think revives the idea that sharing and mutuality can be as effective a base for productive activity as private ownership.
- Common platforms and peer to peer working allows innovation to emerge from a community.
- We Think culture is a hybrid of these odd ingredients: the geek, the academic, the
- hippy and the peasant.
- Media and culture used to be an industrial business
- dependent upon large printing presses and expensive television studios, making
- products for the mass audiences needed to sustain their costly operations.
- The spread of the web means more people than ever can have their say, post their
- comment, make a video, show a picture, write a song.
Notes on Chapter Three...
It then received 
