Wednesday, October 13, 2010 • 7:30 PM • James A. Little Theater, New Mexico School for the Deaf
Yochai Benkler Harvard University
The Penguin and The Leviathan: The Science and Practice of Cooperation
What do Toyota's innovative supply-chain management structure, a Chicago police commissioner's call for prayer vigils on inner-city street corners, and Wikipedia have in common? All are examples of systems that have turned to human cooperation, rather than straight rewards, punishment, or control to achieve their desired ends. These diverse systems fly in the face of what for decades was received wisdom about how to build incentives and manage complex economic, social, and technical systems. Increasingly, work in human behavioral and brain sciences and in evolutionary theory is helping us to better understand why these systems move contrary to the longstanding assumptions of selfish human action that underlay the design of so many systems, at least since Hobbes's Leviathan.