Open Collective Work - Definition, Delineation and Disquisition

The statement of working collectively is not new to the world. An example of efficient collective work in the past is the ad-hoc building of gothic cathedrals in the 12th and 13th century. The building ground of cathedrals acted as the basis for a large number of people, each working on a piece of the all-encompassing goal to build a cathedral (Turnbull, 1993). In addition, more examples can be found in the book “The Wisdom of Crowds” of James Surowiecki, which was published in 2005. These examples reach from solving fairly simple tasks like estimating the weight of an ox collectively at a farming exhibition (Surowiecki, 2005: XII–XIII), to predicting the potential location of a sunken submarine (Surowiecki, 2005: XX–XXI). Nowadays what makes the concept of working collectively seem new to the world and nascent in the public mind, is the appearance of the so called Web 2.0. Web 2.0 describes a change in the socio-technical way of using the internet. The des-ignated utilization of the Web is no longer the mere dissemination of information, but the active participation of internet users contributing to the web and generating both content and value (Prof. Dr. Lackes & Dr. Siepermann)