Vision
The vision of WinWinWiki is to engage experts and organizations to build content and tools that will inspire, educate and connect willing lay people to challenges and organizations based on mutual interest.
Background
WinWinWiki is based on the ideas articulated by Robert Wright in his book, Nonzero. In short, the key concept in Nonzero is that communities tend to work together to develop "win-win" behaviors, and over time the workable sizes of collaborative communities has grown. Initially collaboration was at the family level, then group, tribe, city-state, nation-state. International win-wins have been developing for at least the last century. Occasionally, such as for certain health threats such as SARS or bird flu, we see nearly worldwide collaboration.
The point is, humanity is not engaged in a purely "zero-sum" / "win-lose" situation. Instead, there are "win-win" (and, yes, "lose-lose") options available. In the long run, groups that find the "win-win" options have an advantage over those groups that pick "win-lose" (end especially "lose-lose") choices.
So there is good evidence that we humans have the capacity to collaborate effectively. We can simply accept that fact, and allow collaboration to progress haphazardly as it has in the past. Or we can choose to collaborate on collaboration!
WinWinWiki makes the latter choice.
An additional aspect of WinWinWiki is the inherent essentially democratic nature of wiki technology. While large scale collaboration has until now been predominantly the purview of political leaders, we now have the opportunity to get involved at every level. And there are some challenges that truly need to be addressed by the masses. How many people might get involved? As a reference point, over 60 million people volunteered their time for one cause or another between September 2004 and September 2005 in the US alone. Once we get organized, we will make a difference!
What sorts of challenges are best addressed by masses of well intentioned lay people? The WinWinWiki answer (or answers) will be developed by consensus. But for sake of discussion, let's consider world peace. Is it simply the responsibility of our elected officials? Is the task of the UN? It's not a simple question. But at least one authoritative breakdown of the challenges of world peace includes mutual understanding between nations as a key goal. That goal is not likely to be addressed effectively at the government level.
The Plan
Adademics, philanthropists, philosophers, visionaries, leaders, charitable organizations, experts in relevant fields, skilled and unskilled volunteers will use WinWinWiki as a central point to connect, communicate and discover what matches their situation. In particular, WinWinWiki seeks to empower the that can bring the power of numbers to bear.
At a high level, WinWinWiki community members will invest in articulating yet-to-be-adopted world scale win-win arrangements, situations and outcomes. These desired outcomes can link to analysis (one or more) and recommended high level projects, which will in turn be translated into hands-on actions for various roles (individual volunteers, industrial nations, government entities, NGOs, health professions, pharmaceutical companies, etc), timeframes and relevant organizations, and so on.
Possible examples of win-win outcomes are: sustainable development, the elimination of abject poverty, non-violent dispute / conflict resolution, elimination of terrorism, and expansion of human rights. The full list will be defined by the community. To see the current list and add yours, start by going to WinWinWiki:WinWinOutcomes. If you're not sure where to put your idea, an easier approach is to add the idea to WinWinWiki:WinWinNewIdeas.
Examples
Some desirable outcomes might be:
- Worldwide Eradication of Tuberculosis
- (Links to Partners in Health, etc)
- Ending Poverty
- (Links to The Earth Institute at Columbia University)
- Development of Carbon Neutral Energy
- (Links to...you decide.)