OPEN

It seems very likely that the reason that social media, such as wikis and folksonomies are successful, and will be increasingly successful in the near future, is clear at last: humans are hard-wired to collaborate and want to promote our trustworthiness to others. We were born to blog.

New theories of social-Darwinism are paying close attention to the role of trust and collaboration between non-related individuals as part of the story of humans’ evolutionary success. The Economist‘s survey of human evolution in this week’s double-issue makes for a fascinating read on this subject (apologies – this is subscription based – but either buy one or get the hard copy from your newsagents now – it’s a global publication and value for money wherever you are).

Meanwhile, the Financial Times ran a story about Wikipedia (the largest and most famous wiki project in the world) yesterday in light of some of the more recent manifestations of  the backlash against it (sorry but this one is also subscription-based).

After celebrating the relative reliability and accuracy of information on Wikipedia, the author of the piece Robert Matthews, draws a parallel with other small acts of self-less behaviour, such as tipping in restaurants that you are unlikely to visit again (so you have no need to incentivise future good service):

"pointless"
tipping is a means of proving trustworthiness – not so much to others but to
ourselves. As such, they reinforce our self-image and, while that may bring no
obvious reward, the "good guy" persona can pay dividends in other circumstances,
such as finding a partner or getting a job.

 

Wikipedians
– as contributors to Wikipedia are known – may thus be contributing to the
grand project in order to prove to themselves they are the kind of person
willing to do a decent job simply for the benefit of others.If
so, the rise of Wikipedia may be evidence that the world is not going to the
dogs after all – despite what you read in the papers.

Quite a pair of stories for Christmas reading. Nice to have one’s instincts that there’s a richer life beyond command-and-control, kill-or-be-killed, predatory models of success in human endeavours.

Peace and goodwill to all bloggers, wiki writers and open source aficionados etc. – evolution’s on your side…