March 20, 2008

We-think: Does Mass Creativity Work?

We Think
Innovation strategist Charles Leadbeater has an interesting book out titled We-think. He examines the growing collaborative culture of the internet and its opportunities and challenges. Leadbeater says we’re at a crossroads involving mass creativity, crowdsourcing and the new world of shared and free content. He questions whether or not all this collective creativity is a good thing. In keeping with this idea, the first three chapters and the entire original draft of the book are available on his site.

From the first chapter:

If you are not perplexed you should be. As the web becomes ever more ubiquitous, it infiltrates our lives and shapes what we think is possible, we are increasingly unnerved about what we might have unleashed. Will the web promote democratic collaboration and creativity? Or will it be a malign influence, rendering us collectively stupid by our reliance on what Google and Wikipedia tells us it true, or worse promoting bigotry, thoughtlessness, criminality and terror? How will it change the way we think and behave and what will its growing domination of the world of information and ideas do to us? Clearly there is enormous potential.

[via Social Hallucinations]

Article categories: Creative Class, Us, Together, User Generated Content, Web & Technology, Work & Business