Connect - share - collaborate - create (part 1)

The next ten years will be the sharing and collaborating years. The way we work, play and interact is changing rapidly along lines of connecting to others, sharing ourselves, collaborating with others and creating together.

This is occurring due to what is known as Web 2.0 technologies. Just over two years ago, everyone had heard of Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Hardly anyone had heard of Barack Obama. It was Obama who tapped into the sharing and collaboration wave. While others were saying, “I can do this”, he was saying, “We can do this”.

In this article I will outline how in the areas of copyright, social interactions, education, media and jobs will change as a result of a move to a connecting, sharing, collaborating and creating world.

My right to copy

Close to 700,000 songs are downloaded illegally every five minutes. How are music executives going to survive?

Within ten years time, copyright as it currently stands will be dead and buried if not already. Does the death of copyright also mean the death of music, writing and movies? Definitely not. On the contrary, I believe copyright hinders creativity. I believe that within the next ten years we will enter a new golden age of art. Copyright has no place in the sharing and collaborating world.

Currently, most copyright is not controlled by their originators. As such, an industry has risen which controls much of what we see and hear. It is assessed on commercial value, not on artistic merits.

You only have to witness the evolution and rise of the open source community in their ability to reach new boundaries in delivering great products, unencumbered by economic and commercial realities.

It has been argued that without copyright, artists (of all kinds) will not be able to make a living. Shakespeare, Mozart and Da Vinci all did quite well without copyright as do many in the open source community, as do contributors to On Line Opinion (OLO). There are currently more than 3,000 authors who have contributed to OLO using the Creative Commons Licence.

What will replace copyright? I believe mechanisms such as the Creative Commons Licence and the GNU General Public Licence, which is also known as copyleft licence, will. Originators works will be free to disseminate.

People (often who have never met) will take what is there, add value, share and work together. People will combine various items together to form a new product. This is known as mashup. The mobile phone of today is a prime example of a mashup, where existing technologies: phone, camera, voice recorder, alarm and music player have been combined into one device. Mashup is all about adding value.

In ten years time, there will not be many music executives left.

Hear me, see me, meet me

Currently, one in eight couples in the US who married last year met online. If MySpace was a country with its 200 million registered users, it would be the fifth largest country in the world. Is Isaac Asimov’s story of how people are so used to interacting online that they cannot bear physical contact about to become reality?