How networked technology enables the emergence of a new collaborative society. Humans are
hard-wired for collaboration and new technologies of communication act as a super-amplifier of
our natural collaborative mindset. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series
examines the emergence of a new kind of social collaboration enabled by networked technologies.
This new collaborative society might be characterized as a series of services and startups that
enable peer-to-peer exchanges and interactions though technology. Some believe that the
economic aspects of the new collaboration have the potential to make society more equitable
others see collaborative communities based on sharing as a cover for social injustice and user
exploitation. The book covers the sharing economy ” and the hijacking of the term by
corporations different models of peer production and motivations to participate
collaborative media production and consumption the definitions of amateur” and professional ”
and the power of memes hactivism and social movements including Anonymous and anti-ACTA
protest collaborative knowledge creation including citizen science collaborative
self-tracking and internet-mediated social relations as seen in the use of Instagram
Snapchat and Tinder. Finally the book considers the future of these collaborative tendencies
and the disruptions caused by fake news bots and other challenges.
