Who You Know And What They Share.

Last night, at NESTA, I attended the Mass Collaboration discussion to hear Mark Earls bring his Herd ideas to life and Howard Rheingold pointing us to examples of collaboration blurring competitive boundaries.

While the aversion of some of the audience to the idea that we humans are not rational beings was palpable, I have no problem with that thought - no doubt due to my having endured an economics degree filled with theory that was predicated upon that falsehood and which produced results that bore no relation to the world in which I lived.

Indeed my big takeaway was the reminder that the future is about social interaction rather than technology. This of course means that we should all worry less about modelling those irrational consumers on our computers and spend more time looking at what they and we actually do.

Similarly for collaborative purposes, we should continue to strive to enrich our online connections by taking them offline and, in that vein, it was great to finally and completely unexpectedly meet both JP and Doc Searls. Just goes to show I must get out more.


Bonus links: Another slant on taking the online world offline can be found in Lauren's fabulous reports from Ars Electronica.

Last night's talks can be heard here.