I am part of a brilliant trend and I feel happy.
Says BusinessWeek, in this article entitled "The Power of Us," I'm part of a....
...big, hairy, monstrous organism, that is. The nearly 1 billion people online worldwide -- along with their shared knowledge, social contacts, online reputations, computing power, and more -- are rapidly becoming a collective force of unprecedented power. For the first time in human history, mass cooperation across time and space is suddenly economical. "There's a fundamental shift in power happening," says Pierre M. Omidyar, founder and chairman of the online marketplace eBay Inc. (EBAY ) "Everywhere, people are getting together and, using the Internet, disrupting whatever activities they're involved in."
Mass cooperation across time and space? It touches me profoundly that I'm part of that. You see, Bloggers reveal their knowledge -- themselves -- all the time and it doesn't get more cooperative than that. I end up wanting to know more about what these people know about. I get hooked, and so do roughy 10 million other people.
And online reputation? I can tell you I feel bad when I act unbecoming to online customer service. (Maybe I don't sense cooperation?) But I feel good when I use paypal on Ebay and click on "donate" on Mozilla, for example. (Maybe I feel I'm giving, not paying?)
In any event, give people information and access to other people, and just step back and see what they do with it. We feel a network of brains synthesize information into knowledge, collaboration, experience and wisdom. We feel evolution happening. An evolution that depends on others.
Do you feel the Power of Us? I know I do. Bloggers provide me with a sort of continuous learning opportunity. They plug me in to what's going on, and that requires others. I depend on others in a profound way.
This isn't touchy-feely stuff. It transforms the economy.
How can a tiny European upstart like Skype Technologies S.A. do a number on a trillion-dollar industry? By dialing up a vast, hidden resource: its own users. Skype, the newest creation from the same folks whose popular file-sharing software Kazaa freaked out record execs, also lets people share their resources -- legally. When users fire up Skype, they automatically allow their spare computing power and Net connections to be borrowed by the Skype network, which uses that collective resource to route others' calls. The result: a self-sustaining phone system that requires no central capital investment -- just the willingness of its users to share. Says Skype CEO Niklas Zennström: "It's almost like an organism."
To be sure, there's still a lot of junk to wade through. Search engine have solved one giant problem (to locate the kowledge), but given us another giant problem (knowledge overload). What you need is more eyeballs. That comes from other people. In fact, this BusinessWeek link was provided by my personal knowledge consultant and collaborator. (Yes, they exist.)
How do you tap into the Power of Us? Organize your knowledge and stay connected, that's how. Everyone knows that knowledge is power, but Kpedia says: Organized Knowledge is Rocket Power.
Read what else Businessweek has to say about the Power of Us.
I feel happy too. But then both you and I don't work inside hierarchically structured industries where the power is at the top or at the center.
We can see the enormous potential benfits of connecting brains together in a network. Even two brains collaborating seems to be many times better than one brain alone. The forces of knowledge that are released are enourmous.
Others see the threat as their power devolves before their disbelieving eyes to the edges of the network - the "Democratization of Industry" to use Prahalad's term. Expect also enourmous resistive forces in attempts to preseve the status quo.
As these two opposing forces attempt to resolve, the world economy will change in unimaginable ways.
As Emerson said, "There are always two groups: the Movement and the Establishment."