People used to depend on newspspers, radio, tv, or a word of mouth to obtain news or info. Now that the web can be used for information sharing and collaborative production, people are able to produce, share, or contribute to the news and other information through platforms such as flickr or blogs. Users are able to connect to each other with the information they share since the tags on these platforms allow people to see who also posted or shared something under the same topic or category. The web is able to form and gather groups of people through the act of sharing. This is easier than trying to make a group of people cooperate face to face.
Flickr is an example where users can connect through photo sharing and information gathering. It changed the “old order of group activity [...from] ‘gather, then share’ into ‘share, then gather’” (Shirky 35). This kind of shows a change in social relationships since people would find others that they can connect with through tags without searching in different places to find people that share similar interests, experiences, or point of views. This is the idea of how we can use the web to “reach the people [we] want without having to broadcast [our] messages to everybody” (33). On flickr, users are even able to share photos of events, natural disasters or big happenings such as the London transit bombing. The photos taken by individuals at the place of the events are able to provide more information/coverage, evidence, or experience to the world than professional news reporters or photojournalists. It saves the cost of having reporters or journalists to travel to places. People that are present at the locations can easily record down their personal experiences and situations faster, which show more value to the audience. This new way of reaching out to people through sharing on the web seems like a much easier way to form groups that are cooperative and committed.
The difference between sharing and cooperation is that sharing allows individuals more freedom and choice to share or contribute, while cooperation involves “changing [one’s] behavior to synchronize with people” (49). It is easier for people to share since they can choose whatever content and how much of it they want to provide to others. When working with a group of people face to face, it is difficult to agree with things so it is usually decided with a majority vote or breaking up the tasks like in organizations. When working in groups, I always feel that I have to synchronize with the people in order to come up with an agreement. It gets harder when the group is large and I find myself sticking to a couple of the people in the group that I can communicate better with. This is just like how the Birthday Paradox shows that as the group gets larger, the faster the group complexity grows; making connections more complicated. It is much like having dinner with a large group of people where it is hard to hear the people at the far sides, so everyone ends up talking to the people that are the nearest to them. The web is able to solve these problems in group work with open source platforms that people can connect with others through sharing.
