Collaboration and Technology: a result of a learned behavior or an instinct

As I watched Howard Rheingold’s (2005) video discussing the evolution of society, collective action, and the natural instinct of people to collaborate, a few questions arise: is collaboration an instinct or a learned behavior?, how our society has been transformed by collaboration?, and how communication and technology has influenced those changes?

The discussion in "Is being green a basic instinct or learned behaviour?" poses an interesting point of view of the psychological principles that influences people. As it suggests, people have a social instinct to interact with others and take inspiration from their actions. Thus collaboration can be considered a basic instinct. What influences a collaborative behavior is what, as Rheingold (2005) points out, might be influenced by social institutions and might vary depending on each individual.

There are many examples in history on how technology has influenced society and collaboration. Rheingold (2005) presents how technological tools, like open source products (Linux, Mozilla, Apache, and Wikipedia) and the free Open University lectures, posted by Berkley and Yale, are being used as collaboration means. These resources can be viewed as a result of constuctivist collaborative efforts of a community of knowledge. The tools that facilitate collaboration are under continuous development, especially within the Web 2.0 applications. As these tools continue its deployment, learning will be an "open door" to promote collaboration, while students analyze, create, and construct their knowledge through their initiative and independence.