We as a society are in the midst of great disruptions in technology, business, ideology, and science. Ideas, trends, practices, and habits of mind tend to cohere over periods of time. When any relatively stable and coherent system—an economy, a country, or a community—suffers a shock, it leads to a new flexibility, a new openness to different ways of explaining our world and organizing our lives. This is the way we come to reexam- ine old practices, try new ones, and adapt to the changes happening around us.
The economic collapse of has forced all of us to come to terms with the fallibility of economic and financial systems built on self-interest. It simply means we should open our minds to the possibility that the Invisible Hand of the unregulated markets is a poor explanation of actual markets and actual human beings.
It means that we should look to ways we can harness cooperation and collaboration to improve the systems we inhabit, rather than stubbornly cling to impoverished descriptions of those systems. The world is changing at lightning speed. We are now at a period in our history when we need to learn how to rely on one another more than ever. But the seismic disruptions. Take what is unques- tionably one of the greatest disruptions since the Industrial Revolution—the Internet.
A few years ago, when I wrote my previous book, The Wealth of Networks, I spent more than five hundred pages trying to work out, in excruciating detail, whether and how the Internet is a fundamental, long-term change or simply a newer, faster vehicle for accessing, shar- ing, and disseminating the information we already had available. What I found was that the Internet has allowed social, nonmarket behavior to move from the periphery of the industrial economy to the very core of the global, networked information economy.
Information and news, knowledge and culture, computer-mediated social and eco- nomic interactions form the foundation of everything in all aspects of our lives—from the pursuit of democracy and global justice, to the latest trends in business and media, to the best innovations in the most advanced economies.
The Internet has revolutionized how we produce information and the knowledge foundations of our society. The emergence of social production on the Internet has given us countless newer, cheaper, easier, and more re- warding platforms for collaboration than we have ever had before. On the web, people are engaging in voluntary acts of cooperation every day. We share our advice, and receive advice from others on everything from what movie to see, to where.
The anonymity of the web makes us feel safe enough to join support groups for problems we would have otherwise suffered alone, find people who share interests we were embarrassed to indulge offline. We help one an- other expand our professional networks, even brainstorm with people in far-flung corners of the world to solve social problems or find cures for those diseases the drug compa- nies have ignored.
In other words, we find small ways and large to integrate voluntary, productive activities into our daily lives—and we use and build upon the contributions of others who do the same.
Few simple metrics show this more clearly than the fact that almost all of the top twenty most trafficked and linked websites are either search engines like Google and Yahoo, social networking sites like Facebook, or sources of information or entertainment created by users like Wikipedia, YouTube, or Flickr.
If you think of the top ten results on any given Google search, again you will find a large component of nonprofit, or personal, and in any event free and open sites providing the ultimate answer. And in- creasingly we see software developers, entrepreneurs, and civil society organizations experimenting with and build- ing online systems of social, cooperative interaction—with amazing results.
The disruptions wrought by the Internet, of course, have rapidly accelerated the rate of globalization and. Only in slow-moving markets can efficiency alone keep you ahead. And this can- not be done through command and control, nor through incentive schemes however well refined they may be , be- cause creativity and insight are impossible to monitor and measure.
More businesses are coming to see that they must instead harness the intrinsic motivations of their employees and managers—the moral, social, and emotional drivers of human behavior, rather than just the material. This not only makes employees happier and more productive, it also spreads the practice of cooperation throughout the entire industry by encouraging competitors to construct and em- ploy their own cooperative systems and techniques.
I am optimistic in thinking that we are now ripe to take on the task of using human cooperation to its fullest potential—to make our businesses more profitable, our economy more efficient, our scientific breakthroughs more radical, and our society safer, happier, and more stable. The time is ripe not just in the world, but also in science. Today we have more evidence, more theory, and more legitimacy for the position that, while self-interest is of course part of the story of what drives human action, it is only part.
A more complete story lies beneath the surface. Though we can see. What I hope this book will do is peel away those layers and help us reexamine our motivations and habits of mind. My hope is that by presenting the overwhelming evidence not just from the real world but also from the biological and social sciences, I can help us to overcome the power of the notion of universal selfishness and present new ideas and ways of thinking about how to design the systems in which we live: from the simplest business practices, to the most complex educational models, to the labyrinthine legal and technical arrangements governing everything from wireless communications to intellectual property controls on inno- vation and creativity.
For decades we have been designing systems tailored to harness selfish tendencies, without regard to potential negative effects on the enormous potential for coopera- tion that pervades society. We can do better. We can design systems—be they legal or technical; corporate or civic; ad- ministrative or commercial—that let our humanity find a fuller expression; systems that tap into a far greater promise and potential of human endeavor than we have generally allowed in the past.
Make no mistake. The evidence I describe certainly includes robust, repeated findings that some peo- ple will act selfishly and in pursuit of their own self-interest some of the time. Moreover, no matter how selfless we may. We know that the same incentives, extrinsic or intrinsic, will not work for the same people at all times. People are different. Some are inclined to behave cooperatively, and so respond strongly to the vari- ous drivers of cooperation. Others do not. My aim is not to depict some fantasy world in which we pretend to be com- pletely self-sacrificing creatures.
It is merely to show that people, in general, will react cooperatively in certain situa- tions and selfishly in others, and to help us figure out how to design systems that encourage, foster, and sustain coop- eration to the greatest extent possible.
In the next few chapters I will look at the intellectual arc of work in various fields over the past fifty years in sev- eral core disciplines concerned with human action and mo- tivation. We will look broadly, but also dive more deeply into the role of cooperation in social relations: the effects of em- pathy and solidarity, our drive to do what is right and fair, and our desire to conform to the normal.
I will draw from such diverse fields as evolutionary biology, experimental economics, psychology, organizational sociology, and neu- roscience. These offer useful lessons about how to induce and sustain human cooperation in a wide range of settings.
How we see ourselves plays a significant role in what we end up becoming. The selfish view of the self is not only unflattering, it is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. This book is at least partly about regaining a more balanced view of our- selves. I am not suggesting we are saints. Valuing independence, autonomy, capitalism, and individ- ualism do not automatically make us egocentric, egotistic, heartless beings. Cooperation and profit can coexist. Em- bracing this duality, learning how to remake our society around it and harness it for individual, corporate, and soci- etal goals, is not only possible, it is imperative.
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Explore Documents. Written by Yochai Benkler. They all show the power and promise of human cooperation in transforming our businesses, our government, and our society at large. Because today, when the costs of collaborating are lower than ever before, there are no limits to what we can achieve by working together.
For centuries, we as a society have operated according to a very unflattering view of human nature: that, humans are universally and inherently selfish creatures.
As a result, our most deeply entrenched social structures — our top-down business models, our punitive legal systems, our market-based approaches to everything from education reform to environmental regulation - have been built on the premise that humans are driven only by self interest, programmed to respond only to the invisible hand of the free markets or the iron fist of a controlling government.
In the last decade, however, this fallacy has finally begun to unravel, as hundreds of studies conducted across dozens of cultures have found that most people will act far more cooperatively than previously believed.
Here, Harvard University Professor Yochai Benkler draws on cutting-edge findings from neuroscience, economics, sociology, evolutionary biology, political science, and a wealth of real world examples to debunk this long-held myth and reveal how we can harness the power of human cooperation to improve business processes, design smarter technology, reform our economic systems, maximize volunteer contributions to science, reduce crime, improve the efficacy of civic movements, and more.
A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the dynamics of cooperation in 21st century life, The Penguin and the Leviathan not only challenges so many of the ways in which we live and work, it forces us to rethink our entire view of human nature. Did you find this document useful? Is this content inappropriate?
Report this Document. Flag for inappropriate content. Download now. For Later. We cannot guarantee that every book is in the library. Posted on , by luongquocchinh. The Austro-Hungarians and Germans have their Clankers, steam-driven iron machines loaded with guns and ammunition.
The British Darwinists employ fabricated animals as their weaponry. Their Leviathan is a whale airship, and the most masterful beast in the British fleet. Aleksandar Ferdinand, prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is on the run.
His own people have turned on him. His title is worthless. As a result, our most deeply entrenched social structures — our top-down business models, our punitive legal systems, our market-based approaches to everything from education reform to environmental regulation - have been built on the premise that humans are driven only by self interest, programmed to respond only to the invisible hand of the free markets or the iron fist of a controlling government.
In the last decade, however, this fallacy has finally begun to unravel, as hundreds of studies conducted across dozens of cultures have found that most people will act far more cooperatively than previously believed. Here, Harvard University Professor Yochai Benkler draws on cutting-edge findings from neuroscience, economics, sociology, evolutionary biology, political science, and a wealth of real world examples to debunk this long-held myth and reveal how we can harness the power of human cooperation to improve business processes, design smarter technology, reform our economic systems, maximize volunteer contributions to science, reduce crime, improve the efficacy of civic movements, and more.
For example, he describes how:. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the dynamics of cooperation in 21st century life, The Penguin and the Leviathan not only challenges so many of the ways in which we live and work, it forces us to rethink our entire view of human nature.
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