Cooperation as drum circle, Collaboration as orchestra
When collaborating, people work together (co-labor) on a single shared goal.
Like an orchestra which follows a script everyone has agreed upon and each musician plays their part not for its own sake but to help make something bigger.When cooperating, people perform together (co-operate) while working on selfish yet common goals. The logic here is “If you help me I’ll help you” and it allows for the spontaneous kind of participation that fuels peer-to-peer systems and distributed networks. If an orchestra is the sound of collaboration, then a drum circle is the sound of cooperation.
Collectives collaborate. Collectives are part of the machinery of the previous era. They give priority to the group over the individual and encourage members to adopt a joint identity that unites them around their shared goal.
Connectives cooperate.A connective doesn’t give priority to the group or the individual but instead supports and encourages both simultaneously. There’s no shared sense of identity in a connective because each member is busy pursuing their own goals.
Collectives are breeding grounds for hierarchies and power strugglesThe conductor is famous while the tuba player remains unknown. But if the tuba player gets up to leave someone needs to step in to replace her
Connectives are self-organizing and self-sustainingYou can join or leave a drum circle at any time and the beat goes on with or without you
Delicious bookmarking as a connective…the very first person who used Delicious was able to get value from the system right away …bookmarks are no longer just about remembering but also about finding. And this illustrates the real power of connectives: they’re able to support individuals while encouraging the emergence of new kinds of group value.
Nature is a connective not a collective.In a forest there is no script that all of the organisms follow. There is no conductor. Yet there are countless levels of interdependence and cooperation at work in which selfish goals intersect to sustain each other and create larger, unpredictable, organic patterns.
Every point of collaboration is a potential source of conflict that often gets ‘solved’ with artificial pyramids of rules, authority and power.How can we ensure that collaboration and cooperation coexist without threatening the organic, self organizing nature of connectives?
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Related
Networks, Collaboration, Cooperation and silos
(Source: cloudhead.headmine.net)
