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TED Talks Worth Sharing, Howard Rheingold: The new power of collaboration

Howard Rheingold: The new power of collaboration

Here is the old story: biology is war in which only the fiercest survive; businesses and nations succeed only by defeating, destroying and dominating competition; politics is about your side winning at all costs. But I think we can see the very beginnings of a new story beginning to emerge. It's a narrative spread across a number of different disciplines, in which cooperation, collective action and complex interdependencies play a more important role. And the central, but not all-important, role of competition and survival of the fittest shrinks just a little bit to make room.

I started thinking about the relationship between communication, media and collective action when I wrote "Smart Mobs," and I found that when I finished the book, I kept thinking about it. In fact, if you look back, human communication media and the ways in which we organize socially have been co-evolving for quite a long time. Humans have lived for much, much longer than the approximately 10,000 years of settled agricultural civilization in small family groups. Nomadic hunters bring down rabbits, gathering food. The form of wealth in those days was enough food to stay alive. But at some point, they banded together to hunt bigger game. And we don't know exactly how they did this, although they must have solved some collective action problems; it only makes sense that you can't hunt mastodons while you're fighting with the other groups.

And again, we have no way of knowing, but it's clear that a new form of wealth must have emerged. More protein than a hunter's family could eat before it rotted. So that raised a social question that I believe must have driven new social forms. Did the people who ate that mastodon meat owe something to the hunters and their families? And if so, how did they make arrangements? Again, we can't know, but we can be pretty sure that some form of symbolic communication must have been involved.

Of course, with agriculture came the first big civilizations, the first cities built of mud and brick, the first empires. And it was the administers of these empires who began hiring people to keep track of the wheat and sheep and wine that was owed and the taxes that was owed on them by making marks; marks on clay in that time.

Not too much longer after that, the alphabet was invented. And this powerful tool was really reserved, for thousands of years, for the elite administrators (Laughter) who kept track of accounts for the empires. And then another communication technology enabled new media: the printing press came along, and within decades, millions of people became literate. And from literate populations, new forms of collective action emerged in the spheres of knowledge, religion and politics. We saw scientific revolutions, the Protestant Reformation, constitutional democracies possible where they had not been possible before. Not created by the printing press, but enabled by the collective action that emerges from literacy. And again, new forms of wealth emerged.

Now, commerce is ancient. Markets are as old as the crossroads. But capitalism, as we know it, is only a few hundred years old, enabled by cooperative arrangements and technologies, such as the joint-stock ownership company, shared liability insurance, double-entry bookkeeping.

Now of course, the enabling technologies are based on the Internet, and in the many-to-many era, every desktop is now a printing press, a broadcasting station, a community or a marketplace. Evolution is speeding up. More recently, that power is untethering and leaping off the desktops, and very, very quickly, we're going to see a significant proportion, if not the majority of the human race, walking around holding, carrying or wearing supercomputers linked at speeds greater than what we consider to be broadband today.

Now, when I started looking into collective action, the considerable literature on it is based on what sociologists call "social dilemmas." And there are a couple of mythic narratives of social dilemmas. I'm going to talk briefly about two of them: the prisoner's dilemma and the tragedy of the commons.

Now, when I talked about this with Kevin Kelly, he assured me that everybody in this audience pretty much knows the details of the prisoner's dilemma, so I'm just going to go over that very, very quickly. If you have more questions about it, ask Kevin Kelly later. (Laughter)

The prisoner's dilemma is actually a story that's overlaid on a mathematical matrix that came out of the game theory in the early years of thinking about nuclear war: two players who couldn't trust each other. Let me just say that every unsecured transaction is a good example of a prisoner's dilemma. Person with the goods, person with the money, because they can't trust each other, are not going to exchange. Neither one wants to be the first one or they're going to get the sucker's payoff, but both lose, of course, because they don't get what they want. If they could only agree, if they could only turn a prisoner's dilemma into a different payoff matrix called an assurance game, they could proceed.

Twenty years ago, Robert Axelrod used the prisoner's dilemma as a probe of the biological question: if we are here because our ancestors were such fierce competitors, how does cooperation exist at all? He started a computer tournament for people to submit prisoner's dilemma strategies and discovered, much to his surprise, that a very, very simple strategy won -- it won the first tournament, and even after everyone knew it won, it won the second tournament -- that's known as tit for tat.

Another economic game that may not be as well known as the prisoner's dilemma is the ultimatum game, and it's also a very interesting probe of our assumptions about the way people make economic transactions. Here's how the game is played: there are two players; they've never played the game before, they will not play the game again, they don't know each other, and they are, in fact, in separate rooms. First player is offered a hundred dollars and is asked to propose a split: 50/50, 90/10, whatever that player wants to propose. The second player either accepts the split -- both players are paid and the game is over -- or rejects the split -- neither player is paid and the game is over.

Now, the fundamental basis of neoclassical economics would tell you it's irrational to reject a dollar because someone you don't know in another room is going to get 99. Yet in thousands of trials with American and European and Japanese students, a significant percentage would reject any offer that's not close to 50/50. And although they were screened and didn't know about the game and had never played the game before, proposers seemed to innately know this because the average proposal was surprisingly close to 50/50.

Now, the interesting part comes in more recently when anthropologists began taking this game to other cultures and discovered, to their surprise, that slash-and-burn agriculturalists in the Amazon or nomadic pastoralists in Central Asia or a dozen different cultures -- each had radically different ideas of what is fair. Which suggests that instead of there being an innate sense of fairness, that somehow the basis of our economic transactions can be influenced by our social institutions, whether we know that or not.

The other major narrative of social dilemmas is the tragedy of the commons. Garrett Hardin used it to talk about overpopulation in the late 1960s. He used the example of a common grazing area in which each person by simply maximizing their own flock led to overgrazing and the depletion of the resource. He had the rather gloomy conclusion that humans will inevitably despoil any common pool resource in which people cannot be restrained from using it.

Now, Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist, in 1990 asked the interesting question that any good scientist should ask, which is: is it really true that humans will always despoil commons? So she went out and looked at what data she could find. She looked at thousands of cases of humans sharing watersheds, forestry resources, fisheries, and discovered that yes, in case after case, humans destroyed the commons that they depended on. But she also found many instances in which people escaped the prisoner's dilemma; in fact, the tragedy of the commons is a multiplayer prisoner's dilemma. And she said that people are only prisoners if they consider themselves to be. They escape by creating institutions for collective action. And she discovered, I think most interestingly, that among those institutions that worked, there were a number of common design principles, and those principles seem to be missing from those institutions that don't work.

I'm moving very quickly over a number of disciplines. In biology, the notions of symbiosis, group selection, evolutionary psychology are contested, to be sure. But there is really no longer any major debate over the fact that cooperative arrangements have moved from a peripheral role to a central role in biology, from the level of the cell to the level of the ecology. And again, our notions of individuals as economic beings have been overturned. Rational self-interest is not always the dominating factor. In fact, people will act to punish cheaters, even at a cost to themselves.

And most recently, neurophysiological measures have shown that people who punish cheaters in economic games show activity in the reward centers of their brain. Which led one scientist to declare that altruistic punishment may be the glue that holds societies together.

Now, I've been talking about how new forms of communication and new media in the past have helped create new economic forms. Commerce is ancient. Markets are very old. Capitalism is fairly recent; socialism emerged as a reaction to that. And yet we see very little talk about how the next form may be emerging. Jim Surowiecki briefly mentioned Yochai Benkler's paper about open source, pointing to a new form of production: peer-to-peer production. I simply want you to keep in mind that if in the past, new forms of cooperation enabled by new technologies create new forms of wealth, we may be moving into yet another economic form that is significantly different from previous ones.

Very briefly, let's look at some businesses. IBM, as you know, HP, Sun -- some of the most fierce competitors in the IT world are open sourcing their software, are providing portfolios of patents for the commons. Eli Lilly -- in, again, the fiercely competitive pharmaceutical world -- has created a market for solutions for pharmaceutical problems. Toyota, instead of treating its suppliers as a marketplace, treats them as a network and trains them to produce better, even though they are also training them to produce better for their competitors. Now none of these companies are doing this out of altruism; they're doing it because they're learning that a certain kind of sharing is in their self-interest.

Open source production has shown us that world-class software, like Linux and Mozilla, can be created with neither the bureaucratic structure of the firm nor the incentives of the marketplace as we've known them. Google enriches itself by enriching thousands of bloggers through AdSense. Amazon has opened its Application Programming Interface to 60,000 developers, countless Amazon shops. They're enriching others, not out of altruism but as a way of enriching themselves. eBay solved the prisoner's dilemma and created a market where none would have existed by creating a feedback mechanism that turns a prisoner's dilemma game into an assurance game.

Instead of, "Neither of us can trust each other, so we have to make suboptimal moves," it's, "You prove to me that you are trustworthy and I will cooperate." Wikipedia has used thousands of volunteers to create a free encyclopedia with a million and a half articles in 200 languages in just a couple of years.

We've seen that ThinkCycle has enabled NGOs in developing countries to put up problems to be solved by design students around the world, including something that's being used for tsunami relief right now: it's a mechanism for rehydrating cholera victims that's so simple to use it, illiterates can be trained to use it. BitTorrent turns every downloader into an uploader, making the system more efficient the more it is used.

Millions of people have contributed their desktop computers when they're not using them to link together through the Internet into supercomputing collectives that help solve the protein folding problem for medical researchers -- that's Folding@home at Stanford -- to crack codes, to search for life in outer space.

I don't think we know enough yet. I don't think we've even begun to discover what the basic principles are, but I think we can begin to think about them. And I don't have enough time to talk about all of them, but think about self-interest. This is all about self-interest that adds up to more. In El Salvador, both sides that withdrew from their civil war took moves that had been proven to mirror a prisoner's dilemma strategy.

In the U.S., in the Philippines, in Kenya, around the world, citizens have self-organized political protests and get out the vote campaigns using mobile devices and SMS. Is an Apollo Project of cooperation possible? A transdisciplinary study of cooperation? I believe that the payoff would be very big. I think we need to begin developing maps of this territory so that we can talk about it across disciplines. And I am not saying that understanding cooperation is going to cause us to be better people -- and sometimes people cooperate to do bad things -- but I will remind you that a few hundred years ago, people saw their loved ones die from diseases they thought were caused by sin or foreigners or evil spirits.

Descartes said we need an entire new way of thinking. When the scientific method provided that new way of thinking and biology showed that microorganisms caused disease, suffering was alleviated. What forms of suffering could be alleviated, what forms of wealth could be created if we knew a little bit more about cooperation? I don't think that this transdisciplinary discourse is automatically going to happen; it's going to require effort. So I enlist you to help me get the cooperation project started. Thank you. (Applause)

Howard Rheingold: The new power of collaboration Howard Rheingold: Die neue Kraft der Zusammenarbeit Howard Rheingold: Rheold: Η νέα δύναμη της συνεργασίας Howard Rheingold: El nuevo poder de la colaboración Howard Rheingold : Le nouveau pouvoir de la collaboration Howard Rheingold: Il nuovo potere della collaborazione ハワード・ラインゴールドコラボレーションの新たな力 하워드 라인골드: 협업의 새로운 힘 Howardas Rheingoldas: Naujoji bendradarbiavimo galia Howard Rheingold: O novo poder da colaboração Говард Рейнгольд: Новая сила сотрудничества Howard Rheingold: İşbirliğinin yeni gücü Howard Rheingold:协作的新力量 Howard Rheingold:协作的新力量 霍華德‧萊因戈爾德:協作的新力量

Here is the old story: biology is war in which only the fiercest survive; businesses and nations succeed only by defeating, destroying and dominating competition; politics is about your side winning at all costs. Aquí está la vieja historia: la biología es una guerra en la que solo los más feroces sobreviven; los negocios y las naciones solo tienen éxito derrotando, destruyendo y dominando la competencia; La política se trata de que tu lado gane a toda costa. ここに古い話があります:生物学は最も激しいものだけが生き残る戦争です。企業や国は、競争を打ち負かし、破壊し、支配することによってのみ成功します。政治とは、どんな犠牲を払ってもあなたの側が勝つことです。 Aqui está a velha história: a biologia é uma guerra na qual apenas os mais ferozes sobrevivem; as empresas e as nações obtêm sucesso apenas derrotando, destruindo e dominando a concorrência; política é sobre o seu lado vencer a todo custo. Вот старая история: биология - это война, в которой выживают только самые жестокие; предприятия и нации добиваются успеха, только побеждая, уничтожая и доминируя над конкуренцией; политика - это победа вашей стороны любой ценой. 这是一个古老的故事:生物是战争,只有最凶猛的人才能生存;企业和国家只有通过击败、摧毁和支配竞争才能成功;政治是关于不惜一切代价赢得胜利的一方。 But I think we can see the very beginnings of a new story beginning to emerge. Mas acho que podemos ver o início de uma nova história começando a surgir. 但我认为我们可以看到一个新故事的开端开始出现。 It’s a narrative spread across a number of different disciplines, in which cooperation, collective action and complex interdependencies play a more important role. É uma narrativa espalhada por várias disciplinas diferentes, nas quais a cooperação, a ação coletiva e as complexas interdependências desempenham um papel mais importante. Это повествование, охватывающее целый ряд различных дисциплин, в которых сотрудничество, коллективные действия и сложная взаимозависимость играют все более важную роль. 这是一个跨越多个不同学科的叙述,其中合作、集体行动和复杂的相互依存关系发挥着更重要的作用。 And the central, but not all-important, role of competition and survival of the fittest shrinks just a little bit to make room. Y el papel central, pero no tan importante, de la competencia y la supervivencia del más apto se reduce un poco para dejar espacio. E o papel central, mas não tão importante, da competição e sobrevivência do mais apto diminui um pouco para abrir espaço. И центральная, но не самая важная роль конкуренции и выживания наиболее приспособленных лишь немного сжимается, чтобы освободить место.

I started thinking about the relationship between communication, media and collective action when I wrote "Smart Mobs," and I found that when I finished the book, I kept thinking about it. Comecei a pensar na relação entre comunicação, mídia e ação coletiva quando escrevi "Smart Mobs", e descobri que, ao terminar o livro, não parava de pensar nisso. In fact, if you look back, human communication media and the ways in which we organize socially have been co-evolving for quite a long time. Na verdade, se você olhar para trás, os meios de comunicação humanos e as formas pelas quais nos organizamos socialmente vêm evoluindo há muito tempo. На самом деле, если оглянуться назад, средства коммуникации и способы социальной организации человека эволюционировали довольно долго. Humans have lived for much, much longer than the approximately 10,000 years of settled agricultural civilization in small family groups. Os seres humanos viveram por muito, muito mais tempo do que os aproximadamente 10.000 anos de civilização agrícola estabelecida em pequenos grupos familiares. Nomadic hunters bring down rabbits, gathering food. Caçadores nômades derrubam coelhos, coletando comida. Кочевые охотники сбивают кроликов, собирают пищу. The form of wealth in those days was enough food to stay alive. A forma de riqueza naqueles dias era comida suficiente para se manter vivo. В те времена богатством считалось достаточное количество еды, чтобы выжить. But at some point, they banded together to hunt bigger game. Mas em algum momento, eles se uniram para caçar animais maiores. Но в какой-то момент они объединились, чтобы поохотиться на более крупную дичь. And we don’t know exactly how they did this, although they must have solved some collective action problems; it only makes sense that you can’t hunt mastodons while you’re fighting with the other groups. E não sabemos exatamente como eles fizeram isso, embora devam ter resolvido alguns problemas de ação coletiva; só faz sentido que você não possa caçar mastodontes enquanto estiver lutando com os outros grupos. И мы не знаем, как именно они это сделали, хотя, должно быть, решили какие-то проблемы коллективного действия; логично, что вы не можете охотиться на мастодонтов, пока воюете с другими группами.

And again, we have no way of knowing, but it’s clear that a new form of wealth must have emerged. E, novamente, não temos como saber, mas está claro que uma nova forma de riqueza deve ter surgido. И снова у нас нет возможности узнать, но ясно, что должна была возникнуть новая форма богатства. More protein than a hunter’s family could eat before it rotted. Más proteína de la que una familia de cazadores podría comer antes de que se pudriera. Mais proteína do que a família de um caçador poderia comer antes de apodrecer. So that raised a social question that I believe must have driven new social forms. Isso levantou uma questão social que, acredito, deve ter impulsionado novas formas sociais. Did the people who ate that mastodon meat owe something to the hunters and their families? As pessoas que comeram aquela carne de mastodonte deviam algo aos caçadores e suas famílias? And if so, how did they make arrangements? E se sim, como eles fizeram os arranjos? Again, we can’t know, but we can be pretty sure that some form of symbolic communication must have been involved. Novamente, não podemos saber, mas podemos ter certeza de que alguma forma de comunicação simbólica deve estar envolvida.

Of course, with agriculture came the first big civilizations, the first cities built of mud and brick, the first empires. Claro que com a agricultura vieram as primeiras grandes civilizações, as primeiras cidades construídas de barro e tijolo, os primeiros impérios. And it was the administers of these empires who began hiring people to keep track of the wheat and sheep and wine that was owed and the taxes that was owed on them by making marks; marks on clay in that time. E foram os administradores desses impérios que começaram a contratar pessoas para controlar o trigo, as ovelhas e o vinho devidos e os impostos devidos sobre eles, fazendo marcos; marcas no barro naquela época.

Not too much longer after that, the alphabet was invented. Não muito tempo depois disso, o alfabeto foi inventado. And this powerful tool was really reserved, for thousands of years, for the elite administrators (Laughter) who kept track of accounts for the empires. 그리고이 강력한 도구는 제국의 계정을 관리 한 엘리트 관리자 (웃음)를 위해 수천 년 동안 실제로 예약되었습니다. E essa ferramenta poderosa foi realmente reservada, por milhares de anos, para os administradores de elite (Risos) que controlavam as contas dos impérios. And then another communication technology enabled new media: the printing press came along, and within decades, millions of people became literate. E então outra tecnologia de comunicação possibilitou novas mídias: a imprensa apareceu e, em décadas, milhões de pessoas se alfabetizaram. And from literate populations, new forms of collective action emerged in the spheres of knowledge, religion and politics. E de populações alfabetizadas emergiram novas formas de ação coletiva nas esferas do conhecimento, da religião e da política. We saw scientific revolutions, the Protestant Reformation, constitutional democracies possible where they had not been possible before. Vimos revoluções científicas, a Reforma Protestante, democracias constitucionais possíveis onde antes não eram possíveis. Not created by the printing press, but enabled by the collective action that emerges from literacy. Não criado pela imprensa, mas possibilitado pela ação coletiva que emerge da alfabetização. And again, new forms of wealth emerged. E novamente surgiram novas formas de riqueza.

Now, commerce is ancient. Agora, o comércio é antigo. Markets are as old as the crossroads. Os mercados são tão antigos quanto as encruzilhadas. But capitalism, as we know it, is only a few hundred years old, enabled by cooperative arrangements and technologies, such as the joint-stock ownership company, shared liability insurance, double-entry bookkeeping. Mas o capitalismo, como o conhecemos, tem apenas algumas centenas de anos, possibilitado por acordos e tecnologias cooperativas, como a sociedade por ações, seguro de responsabilidade compartilhada, contabilidade de partidas dobradas.

Now of course, the enabling technologies are based on the Internet, and in the many-to-many era, every desktop is now a printing press, a broadcasting station, a community or a marketplace. Agora, é claro, as tecnologias capacitadoras são baseadas na Internet e, na era de muitos para muitos, cada desktop agora é uma impressora, uma estação de transmissão, uma comunidade ou um mercado. Evolution is speeding up. A evolução está acelerando. More recently, that power is untethering and leaping off the desktops, and very, very quickly, we’re going to see a significant proportion, if not the majority of the human race, walking around holding, carrying or wearing supercomputers linked at speeds greater than what we consider to be broadband today. Mais recentemente, esse poder está se soltando e saltando dos desktops, e muito, muito rapidamente, veremos uma proporção significativa, senão a maioria da raça humana, andando por aí segurando, carregando ou usando supercomputadores conectados a velocidades maiores do que consideramos banda larga hoje.

Now, when I started looking into collective action, the considerable literature on it is based on what sociologists call "social dilemmas." Agora, quando comecei a estudar a ação coletiva, a considerável literatura sobre ela se baseava no que os sociólogos chamam de "dilemas sociais". And there are a couple of mythic narratives of social dilemmas. E há algumas narrativas míticas de dilemas sociais. I’m going to talk briefly about two of them: the prisoner’s dilemma and the tragedy of the commons. Vou falar brevemente sobre dois deles: o dilema do prisioneiro e a tragédia dos comuns.

Now, when I talked about this with Kevin Kelly, he assured me that everybody in this audience pretty much knows the details of the prisoner’s dilemma, so I’m just going to go over that very, very quickly. Bem, quando conversei sobre isso com Kevin Kelly, ele me assegurou que todos nesta platéia conhecem os detalhes do dilema do prisioneiro, então vou repassar isso muito, muito rapidamente. If you have more questions about it, ask Kevin Kelly later. Se você tiver mais perguntas sobre isso, pergunte a Kevin Kelly mais tarde. (Laughter)

The prisoner’s dilemma is actually a story that’s overlaid on a mathematical matrix that came out of the game theory in the early years of thinking about nuclear war: two players who couldn’t trust each other. O dilema do prisioneiro é, na verdade, uma história sobreposta a uma matriz matemática que surgiu da teoria dos jogos nos primeiros anos de reflexão sobre a guerra nuclear: dois jogadores que não podiam confiar um no outro. Let me just say that every unsecured transaction is a good example of a prisoner’s dilemma. Deixe-me apenas dizer que toda transação não segura é um bom exemplo do dilema do prisioneiro. Person with the goods, person with the money, because they can’t trust each other, are not going to exchange. Pessoa com a mercadoria, pessoa com o dinheiro, porque não podem confiar um no outro, não vão trocar. Neither one wants to be the first one or they’re going to get the sucker’s payoff, but both lose, of course, because they don’t get what they want. Nenhum dos dois quer ser o primeiro ou receberá a recompensa do otário, mas ambos perdem, é claro, porque não conseguem o que querem. If they could only agree, if they could only turn a prisoner’s dilemma into a different payoff matrix called an assurance game, they could proceed. Se ao menos pudessem concordar, se ao menos pudessem transformar o dilema do prisioneiro em uma matriz de recompensa diferente, chamada de jogo de garantia, poderiam prosseguir.

Twenty years ago, Robert Axelrod used the prisoner’s dilemma as a probe of the biological question: if we are here because our ancestors were such fierce competitors, how does cooperation exist at all? Vinte anos atrás, Robert Axelrod usou o dilema do prisioneiro como uma sondagem para a questão biológica: se estamos aqui porque nossos ancestrais eram competidores tão ferozes, como a cooperação existe? He started a computer tournament for people to submit prisoner’s dilemma strategies and discovered, much to his surprise, that a very, very simple strategy won -- it won the first tournament, and even after everyone knew it won, it won the second tournament -- that’s known as tit for tat. Ele iniciou um torneio de computador para as pessoas apresentarem estratégias do dilema do prisioneiro e descobriu, para sua surpresa, que uma estratégia muito, muito simples venceu -- venceu o primeiro torneio e, mesmo depois de todos saberem que venceu, venceu o segundo torneio -- - isso é conhecido como olho por olho.

Another economic game that may not be as well known as the prisoner’s dilemma is the ultimatum game, and it’s also a very interesting probe of our assumptions about the way people make economic transactions. Outro jogo econômico que pode não ser tão conhecido quanto o dilema do prisioneiro é o jogo do ultimato, e também é uma investigação muito interessante de nossas suposições sobre a maneira como as pessoas fazem transações econômicas. Here’s how the game is played: there are two players; they’ve never played the game before, they will not play the game again, they don’t know each other, and they are, in fact, in separate rooms. Veja como o jogo é jogado: há dois jogadores; eles nunca jogaram antes, não vão jogar de novo, não se conhecem e estão, de fato, em salas separadas. First player is offered a hundred dollars and is asked to propose a split: 50/50, 90/10, whatever that player wants to propose. O primeiro jogador recebe cem dólares e é solicitado a propor uma divisão: 50/50, 90/10, o que quer que o jogador queira propor. The second player either accepts the split -- both players are paid and the game is over -- or rejects the split -- neither player is paid and the game is over. O segundo jogador aceita a divisão - ambos os jogadores são pagos e o jogo acaba - ou rejeita a divisão - nenhum jogador é pago e o jogo acaba.

Now, the fundamental basis of neoclassical economics would tell you it’s irrational to reject a dollar because someone you don’t know in another room is going to get 99. Agora, a base fundamental da economia neoclássica diria que é irracional rejeitar um dólar porque alguém que você não conhece em outra sala receberá 99. Yet in thousands of trials with American and European and Japanese students, a significant percentage would reject any offer that’s not close to 50/50. No entanto, em milhares de testes com estudantes americanos, europeus e japoneses, uma porcentagem significativa rejeitaria qualquer oferta que não chegasse perto de 50/50. And although they were screened and didn’t know about the game and had never played the game before, proposers seemed to innately know this because the average proposal was surprisingly close to 50/50. E embora eles tenham sido selecionados e não soubessem sobre o jogo e nunca o tivessem jogado antes, os proponentes pareciam saber disso inatamente porque a proposta média era surpreendentemente próxima de 50/50.

Now, the interesting part comes in more recently when anthropologists began taking this game to other cultures and discovered, to their surprise, that slash-and-burn agriculturalists in the Amazon or nomadic pastoralists in Central Asia or a dozen different cultures -- each had radically different ideas of what is fair. Agora, a parte interessante vem mais recentemente quando os antropólogos começaram a levar este jogo para outras culturas e descobriram, para sua surpresa, que os agricultores de corte e queima na Amazônia ou pastores nômades na Ásia Central ou uma dúzia de culturas diferentes - cada um tinha idéias radicalmente diferentes do que é justo. Which suggests that instead of there being an innate sense of fairness, that somehow the basis of our economic transactions can be influenced by our social institutions, whether we know that or not. O que sugere que, em vez de haver um senso inato de justiça, de alguma forma a base de nossas transações econômicas pode ser influenciada por nossas instituições sociais, quer saibamos disso ou não.

The other major narrative of social dilemmas is the tragedy of the commons. Garrett Hardin used it to talk about overpopulation in the late 1960s. He used the example of a common grazing area in which each person by simply maximizing their own flock led to overgrazing and the depletion of the resource. Ele usou o exemplo de uma área de pastagem comum na qual cada pessoa, simplesmente maximizando seu próprio rebanho, levava ao sobrepastoreio e ao esgotamento dos recursos. He had the rather gloomy conclusion that humans will inevitably despoil any common pool resource in which people cannot be restrained from using it. Ele chegou à conclusão bastante sombria de que os humanos irão inevitavelmente espoliar qualquer recurso comum no qual as pessoas não possam ser impedidas de usá-lo.

Now, Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist, in 1990 asked the interesting question that any good scientist should ask, which is: is it really true that humans will always despoil commons? Agora, Elinor Ostrom, uma cientista política, em 1990 fez a pergunta interessante que qualquer bom cientista deveria fazer, que é: é realmente verdade que os humanos sempre espoliarão os bens comuns? So she went out and looked at what data she could find. She looked at thousands of cases of humans sharing watersheds, forestry resources, fisheries, and discovered that yes, in case after case, humans destroyed the commons that they depended on. Ela examinou milhares de casos de humanos compartilhando bacias hidrográficas, recursos florestais, pescarias e descobriu que sim, caso após caso, os humanos destruíram os bens comuns dos quais dependiam. But she also found many instances in which people escaped the prisoner’s dilemma; in fact, the tragedy of the commons is a multiplayer prisoner’s dilemma. Mas ela também encontrou muitos casos em que as pessoas escaparam do dilema do prisioneiro; na verdade, a tragédia dos comuns é um dilema do prisioneiro multijogador. And she said that people are only prisoners if they consider themselves to be. E ela disse que as pessoas só são prisioneiras se assim se consideram. They escape by creating institutions for collective action. And she discovered, I think most interestingly, that among those institutions that worked, there were a number of common design principles, and those principles seem to be missing from those institutions that don’t work.

I’m moving very quickly over a number of disciplines. In biology, the notions of symbiosis, group selection, evolutionary psychology are contested, to be sure. But there is really no longer any major debate over the fact that cooperative arrangements have moved from a peripheral role to a central role in biology, from the level of the cell to the level of the ecology. Mas realmente não há mais nenhum grande debate sobre o fato de que os arranjos cooperativos passaram de um papel periférico para um papel central na biologia, do nível da célula para o nível da ecologia. And again, our notions of individuals as economic beings have been overturned. Rational self-interest is not always the dominating factor. In fact, people will act to punish cheaters, even at a cost to themselves. Na verdade, as pessoas agirão para punir os trapaceiros, mesmo que isso custe para si mesmas.

And most recently, neurophysiological measures have shown that people who punish cheaters in economic games show activity in the reward centers of their brain. E, mais recentemente, medidas neurofisiológicas mostraram que pessoas que punem trapaceiros em jogos econômicos mostram atividade nos centros de recompensa de seus cérebros. Which led one scientist to declare that altruistic punishment may be the glue that holds societies together. O que levou um cientista a declarar que a punição altruísta pode ser a cola que mantém as sociedades unidas.

Now, I’ve been talking about how new forms of communication and new media in the past have helped create new economic forms. Agora, tenho falado sobre como novas formas de comunicação e novas mídias no passado ajudaram a criar novas formas econômicas. Commerce is ancient. Markets are very old. Capitalism is fairly recent; socialism emerged as a reaction to that. And yet we see very little talk about how the next form may be emerging. Jim Surowiecki briefly mentioned Yochai Benkler’s paper about open source, pointing to a new form of production: peer-to-peer production. Jim Surowiecki mencionou brevemente o artigo de Yochai Benkler sobre código aberto, apontando para uma nova forma de produção: a produção peer-to-peer. Джим Суровецки кратко упомянул статью Йохая Бенклера об открытом исходном коде, указав на новую форму производства: пиринговое производство. I simply want you to keep in mind that if in the past, new forms of cooperation enabled by new technologies create new forms of wealth, we may be moving into yet another economic form that is significantly different from previous ones. Eu simplesmente quero que você tenha em mente que, se no passado novas formas de cooperação possibilitadas por novas tecnologias criaram novas formas de riqueza, podemos estar nos movendo para outra forma econômica significativamente diferente das anteriores. Я просто хочу, чтобы вы помнили, что если в прошлом новые формы сотрудничества, обеспечиваемые новыми технологиями, создавали новые формы богатства, то мы можем перейти к еще одной экономической форме, которая значительно отличается от предыдущих.

Very briefly, let’s look at some businesses. Очень кратко, давайте посмотрим на некоторые предприятия. IBM, as you know, HP, Sun -- some of the most fierce competitors in the IT world are open sourcing their software, are providing portfolios of patents for the commons. IBM, como você sabe, HP, Sun -- alguns dos concorrentes mais ferozes no mundo de TI estão abrindo o código de seus softwares, estão fornecendo portfólios de patentes para os comuns. IBM, как вы знаете, HP, Sun — некоторые из самых яростных конкурентов в мире ИТ открывают исходный код своего программного обеспечения, предоставляют портфели патентов для общего пользования. Eli Lilly -- in, again, the fiercely competitive pharmaceutical world -- has created a market for solutions for pharmaceutical problems. A Eli Lilly - novamente no mundo farmacêutico ferozmente competitivo - criou um mercado para soluções para problemas farmacêuticos. Eli Lilly — опять же в условиях жесткой конкуренции в фармацевтическом мире — создала рынок решений фармацевтических проблем. Toyota, instead of treating its suppliers as a marketplace, treats them as a network and trains them to produce better, even though they are also training them to produce better for their competitors. A Toyota, em vez de tratar seus fornecedores como um mercado, os trata como uma rede e os treina para produzir melhor, embora também os esteja treinando para produzir melhor para seus concorrentes. Toyota вместо того, чтобы относиться к своим поставщикам как к рынку, относится к ним как к сети и обучает их производить лучше, даже если они также обучают их производить лучше для своих конкурентов. Now none of these companies are doing this out of altruism; they’re doing it because they’re learning that a certain kind of sharing is in their self-interest. Agora, nenhuma dessas empresas está fazendo isso por altruísmo; eles estão fazendo isso porque estão aprendendo que um certo tipo de compartilhamento é do seu próprio interesse. Теперь ни одна из этих компаний не делает этого из альтруизма; они делают это, потому что узнают, что определенный вид обмена отвечает их личным интересам.

Open source production has shown us that world-class software, like Linux and Mozilla, can be created with neither the bureaucratic structure of the firm nor the incentives of the marketplace as we’ve known them. A produção de código aberto nos mostrou que softwares de classe mundial, como Linux e Mozilla, podem ser criados sem a estrutura burocrática da empresa nem com os incentivos do mercado como os conhecemos. Производство с открытым исходным кодом показало нам, что программное обеспечение мирового класса, такое как Linux и Mozilla, не может быть создано ни с бюрократической структурой фирмы, ни с рыночными стимулами, какими мы их знаем. Google enriches itself by enriching thousands of bloggers through AdSense. O Google se enriquece ao enriquecer milhares de blogueiros por meio do AdSense. Google обогащает себя, обогащая тысячи блоггеров через AdSense. Amazon has opened its Application Programming Interface to 60,000 developers, countless Amazon shops. A Amazon abriu sua interface de programação de aplicativos para 60.000 desenvolvedores, inúmeras lojas da Amazon. Amazon открыла свой интерфейс прикладного программирования для 60 000 разработчиков, бесчисленных магазинов Amazon. They’re enriching others, not out of altruism but as a way of enriching themselves. Eles estão enriquecendo os outros, não por altruísmo, mas como uma forma de enriquecer a si mesmos. Они обогащают других не из альтруизма, а как способ обогащения самих себя. eBay solved the prisoner’s dilemma and created a market where none would have existed by creating a feedback mechanism that turns a prisoner’s dilemma game into an assurance game. O eBay resolveu o dilema do prisioneiro e criou um mercado onde não existiria nenhum, criando um mecanismo de feedback que transforma o jogo do dilema do prisioneiro em um jogo de garantia. eBay решила дилемму заключенного и создала рынок, которого не существовало бы, создав механизм обратной связи, который превращает игру с дилеммой заключенного в игру с уверенностью.

Instead of, "Neither of us can trust each other, so we have to make suboptimal moves," it’s, "You prove to me that you are trustworthy and I will cooperate." Em vez de "Nenhum de nós pode confiar um no outro, então temos que fazer movimentos abaixo do ideal", é "Você me prova que é confiável e eu cooperarei". Вместо «Никто из нас не может доверять друг другу, поэтому мы должны делать неоптимальные шаги» это «Вы докажите мне, что вы заслуживаете доверия, и я буду сотрудничать». Wikipedia has used thousands of volunteers to create a free encyclopedia with a million and a half articles in 200 languages in just a couple of years. A Wikipedia usou milhares de voluntários para criar uma enciclopédia gratuita com um milhão e meio de artigos em 200 idiomas em apenas alguns anos. Википедия использовала тысячи добровольцев для создания бесплатной энциклопедии с полутора миллионами статей на 200 языках всего за пару лет.

We’ve seen that ThinkCycle has enabled NGOs in developing countries to put up problems to be solved by design students around the world, including something that’s being used for tsunami relief right now: it’s a mechanism for rehydrating cholera victims that’s so simple to use it, illiterates can be trained to use it. Vimos que o ThinkCycle permitiu que ONGs de países em desenvolvimento colocassem problemas a serem resolvidos por estudantes de design em todo o mundo, incluindo algo que está sendo usado para ajudar no alívio do tsunami agora: é um mecanismo para reidratar vítimas do cólera que é tão simples de usar , analfabetos podem ser treinados para usá-lo. Мы видели, что ThinkCycle позволил НПО в развивающихся странах ставить проблемы, которые должны решать студенты-дизайнеры по всему миру, в том числе то, что прямо сейчас используется для ликвидации последствий цунами: это механизм регидратации жертв холеры, который так прост в использовании. , неграмотных можно научить пользоваться им. BitTorrent turns every downloader into an uploader, making the system more efficient the more it is used.

Millions of people have contributed their desktop computers when they’re not using them to link together through the Internet into supercomputing collectives that help solve the protein folding problem for medical researchers -- that’s Folding@home at Stanford -- to crack codes, to search for life in outer space.

I don’t think we know enough yet. I don’t think we’ve even begun to discover what the basic principles are, but I think we can begin to think about them. And I don’t have enough time to talk about all of them, but think about self-interest. This is all about self-interest that adds up to more. In El Salvador, both sides that withdrew from their civil war took moves that had been proven to mirror a prisoner’s dilemma strategy. Em El Salvador, os dois lados que se retiraram da guerra civil tomaram medidas que comprovadamente espelhavam a estratégia do dilema do prisioneiro.

In the U.S., in the Philippines, in Kenya, around the world, citizens have self-organized political protests and get out the vote campaigns using mobile devices and SMS. Nos EUA, nas Filipinas, no Quênia, em todo o mundo, os cidadãos têm protestos políticos auto-organizados e fazem campanhas eleitorais usando dispositivos móveis e SMS. Is an Apollo Project of cooperation possible? A transdisciplinary study of cooperation? I believe that the payoff would be very big. I think we need to begin developing maps of this territory so that we can talk about it across disciplines. Acho que precisamos começar a desenvolver mapas desse território para que possamos falar sobre isso entre as disciplinas. And I am not saying that understanding cooperation is going to cause us to be better people -- and sometimes people cooperate to do bad things -- but I will remind you that a few hundred years ago, people saw their loved ones die from diseases they thought were caused by sin or foreigners or evil spirits. E não estou dizendo que compreender a cooperação fará com que sejamos pessoas melhores -- e às vezes as pessoas cooperam para fazer coisas ruins -- mas vou lembrá-los de que algumas centenas de anos atrás, as pessoas viam seus entes queridos morrerem de doenças que pensamento foram causados por pecado ou estrangeiros ou espíritos malignos.

Descartes said we need an entire new way of thinking. When the scientific method provided that new way of thinking and biology showed that microorganisms caused disease, suffering was alleviated. Quando o método científico proporcionou essa nova forma de pensar e a biologia mostrou que os microorganismos causavam doenças, o sofrimento foi aliviado. What forms of suffering could be alleviated, what forms of wealth could be created if we knew a little bit more about cooperation? Que formas de sofrimento poderiam ser aliviadas, que formas de riqueza poderiam ser criadas se conhecêssemos um pouco mais sobre cooperação? I don’t think that this transdisciplinary discourse is automatically going to happen; it’s going to require effort. Não acho que esse discurso transdisciplinar vá acontecer automaticamente; vai exigir esforço. So I enlist you to help me get the cooperation project started. Así que te pido que me ayudes a poner en marcha el proyecto de cooperación. Portanto, convoco você para me ajudar a iniciar o projeto de cooperação. Thank you. (Applause)