I agree with the idea that there is an American cultural bias against open, collaborative structures which makes people suspicious of things like wikipedia. Perhaps this is the reason we are such poor collaborators. For over a decade I worked in various roles on hundreds of large complex cutting edge technical projects and seldom experienced productive collaborative teams. Countries that can produce productive collaborators have an economic edge. I’ve personally watched dozens of critical technical projects get derailed because the team members can’t collaborate. Team collaboration is an extremely complex activity and one to date that is poorly researched and understood.

I am particularly inspired by institutions that are not modeled after patriarchal hierarchies. Here are some alternative models for learning organizations that come to mind:
- New England Shaker communities
- computer/technical user groups like BSMUG, ACM SIGS’s
- MUDS/Moos
- yogic organizations like Syda yoga http://www.siddhayoga.org/
- quilting bees/circles