326: the power of community

I found this fascinating article in the UK's Independent newspaper today, which assesses the phenomenon of 'crowdsourcing', whereby people - often 'amateurs' rather than 'professionals' in a particular field, from across the world - come together online to create, innovate and solve problems. As the article sets out, crowdsourcing takes many forms - sometimes led by big business, but more often by small enterprises or just a small group of people with a project idea - but it always involves people freely pitching in to achieve a shared goal, often for little or no remuneration. And the article gives examples of many projects tackled in this way - from designing t-shirts, to developing software, and even to searching for extra-terrestrial lifeforms! Anything that benefits from teamwork, in short, which must account for most challenges humanity faces... Makes you wonder what we could achieve if we put our collective mind(s) to work, doesn't it? Decisively addressing climate change? Finding innovative solutions to seemingly intractable conflicts? Who knows? Who dares to hope...?