This week’s Business Week magazine has an excellent cover story by Rob Hoff called “The Power of Us” that address social interaction and collaboration online and the economic power behind social computing such as the use of skype by businesses and Meetup Inc. which provides a space for forming local groups.

Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, sees a common thread in such disparate innovations as the Internet, mobile devices, and the feedback system on eBay, where buyers and sellers rate each other on each transaction. He thinks they’re the underpinnings of a new economic order. “These are like the stock companies and liability insurance that made capitalism possible,” suggests Rheingold, who’s also helping lead the Cooperation Project, a network of academics and businesses trying to map the new landscape. “They may make some new economic system possible.”

Thanks to Smart Mobs and Many2Many for drawing me to this article.

Relevance: related to idea of SuperGaming by Jane McGonigal that is build on the concept of “more is better” by Andrew Fluegelman, founding member of the 1970s New Games
movement, on the optimal number of players. She sees “a phenomenological pleasure in being part of a larger (much larger) whole.”