The Fourth Great Leap: Why Networked Community is a Revolution

I WROTE THIS IN 2004. I was cleaning out my hard drive and came across it. I thought I would share it one more time... Macdara

The "Great Leap"of human development -- from homo erectus (or proto-homo sapiens) to homo sapiens, creators of art, tools, etc. -- occurred because of the evolution of the voice box, which allowed for complex human language. Others argue that the expansion of the part of the brain causing language was the trigger.

--From Jared Diamond, Third Chimpanzee

Communication is the thing that makes us human, that creates the vast chasm between us and the rest of creation. Why? Other animals communicate through language. Wolves, apparently, use their howling to send information across the Canadian tundra about the approach of spring or potential harm. Birds use sound to initiate mating rituals and find their young. Our closest cousins, the great apes (and chimpanzees??) use language…? . The difference, though, is that we use language to collaborate and innovate -- to build on the knowledge we're born with or taught in youth. Throughout our lives, we add the knowledge of others to our own, either by reading the words of those we don't know or by talking with our coterie and working together to solve problems. "Brainstorming" is uniquely human and requires complex language. Brainstorming means that we are not limited to the intelligence of any one human, but rather that all human endeavor builds on the collective intelligence of many humans.

Spoken language was the first great revolutionary innovation of human history. Written language was the second. Why? Because now humans were not learning only from those they knew personally, but could build on the knowledge of people they would never meet. Information could be stored and retrieved. The third great communications revolution is born out of the invention of the printing press and moveable type. Guttenberg responded to a need of his day -- literacy was on the rise and people were hungry for things to read. So his press met that need and, for the first time, made recorded human knowledge available to a wide swath of people.

And now the Internet. The Web practically eliminates the barriers to being "published," to archiving your own knowledge so that people you will never know, people who are not even alive yet, will have access to your wisdom. More significantly, your brainstorming circle -- that fundamental human gift -- is not limited to people you live near or work with or are related to. Now, through online communities, people are brainstorming with people from entirely different walks of life, different countries. People problem-solve with each other not because geographic chance has thrown them together, but rather because their shared knowledge and experience makes them uniquely qualified to find solutions together. Networked community is the fourth great leap.

In Braintalk.org, for instance, a community of neurological patients, a group of people who share a rare disease collaborated to advance the research into their affliction. Sears Kenmore tapped an online community of unpaid innovators for new product ideas.

The great communication leaps jar the trajectory of human history, and send us on a new path. Before collaborative communication skills, proto-humans lived as small bands of foragers, barely staying ahead of stronger predators by use of simple tools and mental agility. After, we became the farmers and soldiers, the makers of art and complex tools, and, ultimately, the conquerors of all other species. Before printing, humans were governed by superstition and religion. The printing press ushered in the age of science and reason and, ultimately, capitalism and computers. Before networked community, we are a people of nation-states and border battles. In a hundred years, when networked community has become as entrenched in our culture as the printed word is today, what sort of species will we be?