I’m not a computer geek, but I can’t help but be fascinated by the ever-growing, ever-changing participatory online culture in which we now live. I would call it Web 2.0, but someone who is computer savvier than me would probably point out that Web 2.0 has already been replaced by something newer.
One example of a hugely successful collaborative online effort is Wikipedia, 
the free online encyclopedia that is written by volunteers around the world, and almost any of its articles can be edited by anyone.
Shortly after Wikipedia’s debut in 2001, I remember a discussion amongst my colleagues in the reference department of a large library in Minnesota. Most of the librarians were distrustful of an encyclopedia that could be edited by anyone. After all, encyclopedias like the estimable Britannica were written by notable scholars. The “problem” was, for a growing number of reference questions, the answers we found in Wikipedia seemed to be the most useful and up-to-date. Librarians are always supposed to cite their sources, so we decided to that when using Wikipedia we should add a brief explanation, a disclaimer of sorts, of the nature of its authorship. This skeptical attitude now sounds hopelessly out of date. Most librarians I know currently embrace Wikipedia and appreciate that its peer production actually contributes to accuracy.
Still, I’ve remained curious about the mechanics of how Wikipedia works and when I saw the book The Wikipedia Revolution: how a bunch of nobodies created the world’s greatest encyclopedia on the New Book Shelves, I snagged it for my own reading. Andrew Lih writes for the non-techie, giving a clear overview of how Wikipedia works and how it got started. If you want to focus on the mechanics of Wikipedia – how edit wars are resolved and how vandalism is deterred – you could start reading about halfway through the book. However, I found the early chapters intriguing since they explore the origins of collaborative online culture including Usenets and HyperCard of the early 1980’s and even the “online culture” of amateur radio in the 1960s. Lih briefly dips back farther in time, to the 19th century, to point out the collaborative aspects of the venerable Oxford English Dictionary (OED). (For a more complete history of the writing of the OED, check out Simon Winchester’s fascinating and highly readable The Professor and the Madman.)
There are many recent, popular titles that also address digital collaboration and collective intelligence. Here are a few suggestions:
- Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything by
Don Tapscott - Here Comes Everybody: the power of organizing without organizations by Clay Shirky
- Content Nation: surviving and thriving as social media changes our work, our lives, and our future by John Blossom
- How Wikipedia Works: and how you can be a part of it by Phoebe Ayers
- Emergence: the connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software by Steven Johnson
- The Wisdom of Crowds: why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies and nations by James Surowiecki
And, just in case we get too rosy-eyed about the intelligence of crowds, I thought I’d throw in the 1841 classic about the dark side of crowds:
Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the madness of crowds by Charles Mackay
What about you – do you have any favorite books on this topic? Please comment and let everyone know!
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