We-think:About

This wiki is intended to promote discussion of the rise of mass, collaborative creativity, of which Wikipedia itself is a prime example. And it is intended to start a process of collaborative writing and editing of a book: We-think: the power of mass creativity.

To get the discussion going I offer the draft text of We-think.

The argument of We-think is that creativity is invariably collaborative and that opportunities for largely self-organising creative collaboration are going up the whole time. So I decided to apply that thinking to this book. I have two main aims. I hope that opening the book up to readers’ comments before it hits the bookshops it can be made a better book. When you write a book you gets lots of comments from people after it is published, by which time it’s too late to do too much. So It may be that readers will see errors, omissions or additions that could be made to my basic text. My plan is that when the book is formally published in harback in June 2007 it will be by me and scores of other people who have contributed to it and improved. Those contributions will be acknowledged in the text, in brakcets or as footnootes and in the acknolwedgements. But more importantly by making the majority of the text available in this form I hope people will download it, print it, share it. It's just an easy way of getting the ideas out into the world.The more people who talk about the ideas, the better. As I was writing the text I came to see the point of Cory Doctorow's comment that books are really becoming practices rather than texts. What that means for me is that the point of the book is to provoke a conversation about the emerging opportunities for us to organise ourselves in ways that are more collaborative and creative. The formal publication of the book next year is just one focus for that conversation. This wiki, the text on my own website and the conversations other people start are just as much part of it.


 * Why the Next Big Thing Will Be Us
 * Main page