Oz remembers being a child and lovingly turning the pages of the New Book of Knowledge and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Oz even contemplated selling them door to door as a college student one summer, but went to Europe instead.
Gone, all gone, at least in the print version. Now replaced by Wikipedia. Oz reads Wikipedia and occasionally contributes on subjects of interest and when he observes mistakes and errors.
So, why do we contribute, why do we help?
Harvard Professor Yochai Benkler explains:
“[G]roups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signas, rather than market prices or managerial commands.”
From Walter Isaacson’s compeling book The Innovators, …, page 644-645.
Not so much as a why but how. The why is too complex. The spoon stirs the cream in the coffee cup, but what moves the fingers to stir the cream is beyond our ken. We know we do but know not why. As Omar Khayyam beautifully said:
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
Why do we climb a mountain? Because it is there. Like the graffiti artist, Kilroy’s impulse to write, “Kilroy was here” is diverse, but at its subatomic level it is our primordial need to say, “I am here, I exist!”
We do because we can.
But why be nice? Why hold the door open for a stranger? Why tip a main or a waiter you will never see again? Why help a little old lady across the street?
Wikipedia could have been a hodge-podge of mean spirited and false articles and for a while it was. But the greater need to get along, to help won out.
Good wins, because as Mama Yokum said, “Good is better than evil, because it is nicer.”
Leaving Oz 