Response to "Shared Intent & Purpose for Action - Bridging the Gap between Micro & Macro - The next economic paradigm" June 5, 2011

I appreciate the ideas expressed in the post on the next economic paradigm, and have responded below

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Shared Intent & Purpose for Action - Bridging the Gap between Micro & Macro - The next economic paradigm

Open Collaboration could be defined as the next economic paradigm. Indeed we are seeing various projects emerging and converging around intent and purpose based on open collaboration, from the way things are conceived, exchanged/shared and implemented, to the way they are approached and organized. Many are geared towards new ways of living, consuming, producing, cultivating, participating.

(more at http://menemania.typepad.com/helene_finidori/2011/05/shared-intent-and-purpose-for-action.html )
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My response

Hi Helene. I appreciate your post. I agree that Open Collaboration could be defined as the next economic paradigm. I think it could also be the next higher education paradigm as well.

I believe that a very permeable membrane will develop between ongoing education/study/research and economic activity - especially as we move into a genuine post-web knowledge economy (rather than an economy which is still largely based on the thinking of traditional capitalist economic structures - but with digital technology as an add-on and accelerator etc). I hope formal accreditation at higher levels of education (and CVs and references etc) will give way to trust networks and digital histories of work done through open collaboration.

I believe the whole ethos and flavour of the post-web world could be one of collaboration and of co-creating knowledge. This includes working across disciplines and recognising where expertise lies - i.e. knowing "who-knows-what" so "I-don't-need-to-know that". I think this means that generalists will become increasingly valued for their role in enabling specialists from different disciplines to communicate effectively with each other.

I also believe we will get better at linking theory an practice, and we will get better at enabling people with local knowledge to share it with people with comparable knowledge in other localities (or specialistations) and to bring all that into a global picture. I hope there will be an end to top-down-bottom-up models of information sharing and a perception of information flowing across, back and forth, between people who genuinely respect and value each others contributions.

I hope that, increasingly, people are feeling that "computers are about information" but "people are about knowledge"- and we need to learn quickly how to work together more effectively.

I'm currently studying these ideas at the Dadamacadamy - and writing a related weekly learners diary at Pam's blog - http://www.dadamac.net/blog/pamela