Technologies of Cooperation
May 12, 2008
Using tools and symbolic media to do things together in new and more complex ways is uniquely human. Media and collective action have coevolved, with speech, writing, the alphabet, and the press enabling the survival of our primate ancestors, the growth of complex civilizations, the construction of civil societies, self-governance, and collective knowledge creation. Today, digital tools and global networks, together with new knowledge about human psychological, social, economic, and political behavior, make it possible to think about refining — as Adobe does — the design of platforms specifically for the amplification of collaboration.
Presenter Bio
Howard Rheingold
In the 1980s, Howard Rheingold's, Tools for Thought, forecast the future of personal computers as mind-amplifiers. In the 1990s, Rheingold identified and named The Virtual Community; in 2001, his book, Smart Mobs, named another phenomenon. He worked with Institute for the Future, initiating an interdicisplinary study of cooperation. More recently, Rheingold has taught digital journalism, participatory media and collective action, virtual community and social media at Stanford and Berkeley. He was recently awarded a grant from the MacArthur Foundation to create a social media classroom, curriculum, and community of practice around the use of participative media in pedagogy.
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