Ben Hyde has been reading “The Evolution of Cooperation”
by Robert Axelrod:

“There is a lot to chew on in this book. Facinating things about minorities, hierarchies, enclaves, etc. etc. But in the end what’s marvelous about this book is it’s message of hope. It lays an exciting foundation. In short it strongly suggests that nice cooperative behavior (with players willing to react when they are misused) is a dominate strategy over the selfish behavior of those imaginary rational men who populate so much of pop-economics.”

On Friday, we just got back some initial findings from the ethnographic study we’re doing as part of the project I’m working on which aims to encourage people to engage with civic life and politics. We got some insight into the negotiations and conversations that groups engaged in which led to understanding, and cooperation. It’s going to be very, very hard to do, but we have to be able to engender the sorts of interactions that Ben summerises in his post.

Tangent: There might be some merit in “cheating”, and designing the system with deliberate “seams”/firebreaks that encourage real-life interaction. What would the web be like if you could only make a hyperlink if you’d had at least two phone-conversations or one real-life encounter with the custodian of the targetted document?

Been hitting the “Computer Mediated Communication” literature (which is a whole new world for me. I’m still staggered at how much stuff you’re not exposed to if you hang out with designers too much) but the Axelrod book(s) look worthwhile – any other pointers?

This project is really overwhelming in the richness of research already out there and how complicated we could make it – but in the last couple of weeks we (as a team) have been trying to put aside the theory and make things as practical and as simple as possible. The initial field research – being exposed to real-life problems, and propspective users – has really given me a boost, and renewed focus. Finding posts like Ben’s has too…

» Ben Hyde: “Nice is better than mean”