Some personal thoughts
Goods of ancient societies were simple. The earliest goods could be produced by one single human. Later, goods became more complex, and one human was not able to know about all the steps to create such a complex product any more.
Therefore, collaboration was necessary. Even though collaboration increased the productivity, it also brought some problems. When collaboration became more complex, the proportion to which a specific person was involved in the process of producing a good, became more complex and un-transparent.
At this point institutions fooled society.
My belief is that the new possibility for global communication, and the emergence of new technologies and tools to ease collaboration, will re-order the way collaboration is done.
Until today, most institutions and organizations are structured in a hierarchical manner. In my opinion, the reason for this was, to minimize the need for communication.
As communication today does not come with any significant costs, the need for minimizing communication is out-dated. There is no need to reduce communication in any collaborative system, instead communication is encouraged these days.
As communication is one of the main building-blocks for a functional collaboration. New decentralized, and opensource approaches will overtake the current hierarchically structured institutions.
That might happen through 2 major mechanisms.
- First, collaboration is build upon communication. Increasing communication will therefore, most likely, improve collaboration.
- Second, the automatic flattening of institutional structures, will empower the work of every member. Through a better overview of the processes made by the institution, and a stronger feeling of belongingness and invluence on the development of the institution.
The old hierarchical way of organizing institutions will be overtaken by the new, and fastly growing opensource way of collaboration, thereby destroying current institutions and decentralizing productivity.
https://www.ted.com/talks/alex_steffen_sees_a_sustainable_future
https://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex
https://www.ted.com/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration
https://www.ted.com/talks/yochai_benkler_on_the_new_open_source_economics