Sounds a little lofty to me, but this is not the first time ideas like this have come across our radar. Faithful bloggers around the world have been discussing the ideas explored in Wikinomics and wondering about the implications for their respective institutions. Here’s one from Cynthia Ware:
The 2007 book by Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, explores collaboration and the theory that mass collaboration from participants in the online community creates open systems that produce faster and more powerful results than the traditional closed proprietary systems that have been the norm for private industry and educational institutions. Historically, this would also include the Church.
If peering, sharing, and open-source thinking become the norm and collaboration emerges as the dominant paradigm of our era, how will our faith communities reflect and respond to this new world?
Well religion is *supposed* to be lofty is it not?
And yes, religion 2.0 is not too far off:
http://remarkk.com/2007/02/25/tales-of-the-unexpected-transit-camp-inspires-churchcamp/
If mass collaboration will change everything, can we be too lofty?
Religion/faith and it’s accompanying institutions often fall near the very bottom of ranked social institutions in terms of receptivity to change/innovation.
Thus, I think we can speculate that if they (we) participate in embracing the impacts and benefits of collaboration, we may see the emergence of new energies within our spiritual communities the same way those are becoming evident in science, medicine, education, economics, etc. Much more of this throughout my blog (see: The Emerging Church and New Media Technologies).
Looking forward to your continuing exploration of the cutting edge of mass collaboration - as well as the emergence of what could be a Smart Church.
Hi - I’m writing a book about this subject for The Alban Institute. Would love other thoughts people have on this subject. Thanks -
Jan Edmiston