According Wikipedia “In sociology, the concept of community has led to significant debate, and sociologists are yet to reach agreement on a definition of the term.”
The word "community" is used a lot by technologists. Undoubtedly, enabling people to network without regard to geographical borders has the potential to create virtual communities. But before a virtual community can be realized, we need to understand what makes a community. Specifically, technologists don't understand the importance of ethics in doing business in real world communities in the pre-1990's.
For example, in 2011, SONY was attacked by criminal "Hackers." The comments here on Fred Wilson's A VC blog reveal how confusing the tech world's perceptions of community are.
Confucius was a thinker and philosopher who aimed to improve society through education. According to Wikipedia, he “emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity.” You’d think his name had something to do with “making sense of things” - being so close to the English word “confusion” (But ironically it doesn’t. His name was Kong Qiu (孔丘. According to Wikipedia, “Fūzǐ means teacher. Since it was disrespectful to call the teacher by name according to Chinese culture, he is known as just "Master Kong", or Confucius, even in modern days. The character 'fu' is optional; in modern Chinese he is more often called Kǒng Zi (孔子).”)
Here's the wisdom we think Confucius would share with the technologists:
- Predict the future based on past numbers, alone, and nothing will change.
- Focus on what’s wrong and miss what is right.
- Teach the answers instead of the questions and new discoveries will be elusive.
- Follow the herd and end up on a cliff without much choice of what to do next.
- Chaos breeds corruption.
- When the possibility of conflict of interest exists, it will happen.
- Act like a victim and the bad guys will definitely win.
- You can’t force bad guys out, so a system has to be closed for everyone to be open.
- Rules of order are necessary for fair and transparent transactions.
- But when legal "contracts" are introduced, confidence that everyone will respect the rules is low.
- A confident customer will close a deal.
- In negotiations, the advantage does not go to the first one to put a price on the table.
- You get what you pay for.
