"The aggregate transformative effect of millions of people carrying and wearing super-computing power, with high-speed connectivity is creating a new threshold of social organization, an unprecedented scale of collaboration. At this threshold, we are seeing the early forms of a new literacy of cooperation. The technological components—the Internet, mobile devices, and their powerful hybrid—are in place. However, the overarching framework for a new way of thinking about cooperation does not yet exist. The knowledge component is lagging. Nevertheless, we can already begin to glimpse the outlines of such a framework in a number of different realms today."

"Q. | Who are some of the key players involved in building the new theoretical frameworks for cooperation and collective action?

"Robert Axelrod, at the University of Michigan, has combined new understandings from biology, economics, and computation. He has focused specifically on questions about the evolution of cooperation in biology by using computerized strategy games such as “Prisoner’s Dilemma.”

"Lynn Margulis, at the University of Massachusetts, has demonstrated that the early Darwinian emphasis on competition as an evolutionary engine provided only a partial explanation. Symbiosis and cooperative arrangements undergird much of what is now understood about the mechanisms of evolution.

"We should also look at what’s emerging in our understanding of armed conflict and peacemaking. Recent field work in El Salvador by Elisabeth Jean Wood, at New York University, on “political violence and robust settlements” offers evidence that both sides of the long, bitter civil war in that country unconsciously used game-theoretic strategies in their mutual withdrawal from conflict.

"Finally, in the realm of environmental policy and the political management of common resources, the work by Elinor Ostrom, at Indiana University, and others in the sociology of common pool resource management has revealed that grazing pastures, hunting grounds, and fisheries need not fall into the “tragedy of the commons.” Rather, they can be managed locally, through ad-hoc social contracts that seem to have a general resemblance across eras and cultures."

"Q: | You’ve begun a new project with the Institute for the Future to develop the literacy of cooperation. What’s your sense of the task before us?

"Our present level of knowledge about the role of cooperation and collective action in human enterprise is scarcely higher than knowledge about disease before the discovery of microorganisms.

"Descartes decreed that a “new method” was required to think about the physical world. That new method of thinking—the scientific method—led to biology, and biology created the knowledge that served as the foundation for medicine.

"Before we can approach the solution to problems of conflict, cooperation, and governance of an interconnected global world—the “medicine” for social ills, if you will—we need new fundamental knowledge. We need the equivalent of a “biology” of collective action. And for this interdisciplinary understanding to emerge, a new way of thinking across disciplinary boundaries is required. The technology of collective action provides the infrastructure for its own future evolution. Whether or not the deep understanding of cooperation can be catalyzed to knit together the separate strands of inquiry remains, however, a critical uncertainty. Success likely leads to a scenario of peer-to-peer abundance. Failure—which emphasizes control over cooperation—likely leads to political stalemate and stagnant technology."

"Connectivity has a value, and that value changes with the kind of connectivity. For example, the value of a many-to-one connection—such as a cable TV service—grows as the number of customers grows. If the value of the connection to the cable company is $10, the value of the entire service is 10 times the number of customers.

"But in a one-to-one network, like a telephone network, the value of the network grows much faster as the customer base grows: if there are two customers, they can only call each other; if there are three customers, there are eight possible connections. So the value of network grows at the rate of N2–N—or for all intents and purposes, as the square of the number of customers or nodes. This is called Metcalf’s Law, after 3Com founder Robert Metcalf, and it applies to lots of types of networks, including the Internet and local area networks (LANs) that connect devices within an organization or home. It also accounts for the rapid growth of the economy as the Internet became connected.

"Recently, David Reed, at MIT’s Media Lab, has identified a third type of network with an even greater connectivity value. He calls these groupforming networks(GFNs). These are networks that explicitly support forming affiliations among subsets of their customers. Social software, such as Ryze, Tribe, and Friendster, are examples of GFNs. Reed argues that the value of potential connectivity for transactions in these kinds of networks grows exponentially.