Cooperation

Overview

Thursday, 3:30-4:30pm
Format: Introductory Lecture and Moderated Discussion
Lead: Yochai Benkler
Participants: Aaron Shaw, Benjamin Mako Hill, Mayo Fuster Morell

This session will center on the ways in which new technologies harness and fuel new forms of cooperation by lowering costs and enabling collaboration that can be transformative for business, government, and society at large. Yochai Benkler will lead a discussion on emerging cooperative models and their impact on business processes, smarter technology, economic reform, volunteer contributions to research, and other benefits. This session will engage several Berkman Fellows who are conducting observational and experimental research on the underlying social, psychological, and evolutionary mechanisms that affect cooperation, collaboration, dispute resolution, trust, and social and economic exchange. Wikipedia will provide an example through which to gain a deeper sense of the breadth and depth of the phenomenon of online cooperation, as well as illuminating the offline cooperation which forms the foundation of our societies.

Driving Questions

• How do we systematize cooperative human systems design, now that we all know that online collaboration is a critical component of the networked information economy?
• How do we integrate power into our understanding of networked society? What are the limits of public action, and what are the limits of decentralized action, given power in the market, the state, real-world society and the network?

Required Readings

• Yochai Benkler, "The Unselfish Gene", Harvard Business Review," July 2011.
• Cooperation at the Berkman Center

Recommended Readings

• More information on The Wealth of Networks
• The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs Over Self-Interest, (Crown Business) August, 2011.