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| Chapter 2: Technologies of Cooperation |
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- coopetition: how to makes sense of emergent group behavior? "what do people gain from virtual communities that keeps them sharing information with people they might never meet face to face?"
- "social network capital, knowledge capital, and communion" according to Marc A. Smith (Microsoft research sociologist); "put a little bit of what they know and how they feel into the online network and draw out larger amounts of knowledge and opportunities for sociability than they put in." – Howard Rheingold;
- sociologist speaks of collective action and public goods;
- communication technologies lowers the cost of solving collective action dilemmas by enabling more people to pool resources affordably and efficiently;
- collection action dilemmas: balancing of self interest and public goods
- public goods: all benefit regardless of whether they contribute to its creation; indeed, it may not be possible to exclude people from its benefit (e.g. public park, breathable clean air, an active vital community); and its value also increases the more people uses them (e.g. good public health);
- issues of free riders: enjoy public good without helping to create it or over-consuming it; indeed the essence of the challenge is if everyone is acting in their own self-interest (and free rides) then the public good will be never be created and will become rapidly exhausted;
- managing the commons: came from the original concept of pastureland owned by the entire community where individual herders are free to let their flock graze (treated as common resources by the community);
- see Garrett Hardin's article: The Tragedy of the Commons";
- question: how as some groups solved their collective dilemma problems? Sociologist Elinor Ostrom argued that a community may be able to manage the common without an external authority by following these guidelines:
- Ostrom, Elinor, Government the Commons.
- group boundaries are clearly defined
- rules that govern common use tailored to local conditions
- individuals affected by rules have a say in changing them
- external authories allows the community to define their own rules
- community members monitor members' behavior
- a clear and graduated system of sanction for infractions
- community has low-cost conflict resolution mechanisms
- for resources within more complex systems of common pool there is a well-define nested structure for the listed mechanism to cascade; (well defined scoping);
- how is this applicable? the internet can be viewed as a common resource, public good; this theoretical context can be the foundation for examining "self-organizing and self-governing forms of collective action" – Ostrom;
- however another question remains: now that you have a theory of governing, the central question is what motivate people to contribute to the public good in the first place?
- reputation? or more generally social capital? Rheingold argues that there is not single answer to this question; however, the answer seem to be that we cooperate because it is in our interest (and need) to cooperate. by cooperating we may be getting social capital that serve our other needs;
- but what is the underlying reason for people to self-organize on the net? answer: the social network as the killer application for the net.
- people live in social networks: discussed Barry Wellman's social network analysis; Wellman argued that that each individual thrive in a series of "far-flung, loosely-bounded, sparsely knit, fragmentary... partial communities that consist of "networks of kin, neighbours, friends, workmates, and organizational ties." Each person is the center of their own "personal community."
- Rheingold argues that Wellman's social network analysis can also be applied to social network mediated by communications technology; the network amplified the effectiveness of people's ability to form groups;
- cited Fukuyama definition of social capital as the "ease with which people in a particular culture can form new associations."
          
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