1. Groups are here to stay. Period.
2. Enterprises, even governments, are nothing more than groups. Extreme forms of groups, but groups nevertheless.
3. Groups are made of people. So too are enterprises, so too are governments.
4. All this has been true for a very long time. But something’s changed.
5. What’s changed is the quality of group tools, a point that Clay Shirky makes, beautifully, in Here Comes Everybody.
6. What’s changed is the democratised nature of the group tools: they are truly group rather than individual- or hierarchical-pretending-to-be-group.
7. What’s changed is the adoption curve associated with the group tools: Modern group tools are being used by “people” first and “enterprises” later.
8. So for the first time enterprise group tools are actually being designed and stretched and proven and used by the people who will use them in the enterprise. Before they enter the enterprise.
9. The people aren’t ready for enterprises. And the enterprises aren’t ready for the people.
10. The battleground is “security”. And “confidentiality”. And “privacy”. And “identity”. And “control”. All one and the same thing, actually.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about. What are the implications of my trying to derive value from Linus’s Law in an enterprise? In government? How do I get “enough eyeballs” on something?
That’s what I’ve been thinking about. What does it mean to be “private” in an enterprise, particularly a regulated enterprise? People who work in investment banks are used to “loss of privacy”: calls recorded, e-mails scanned, that kind of thing.