In his unique book Dialogue and the art of thinking together William Issacs introduces the Four-Player System originally developed by David Kantor. This is a very important technique for supporting real collaborative thinking in teams.

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Online Reputation Systems are merely digital embodiments of two fundamental mechanisms which humans use to decide whether to trust each other as defined by Philosopher Bertrand Russell : trusting by Acquaintance and trusting by Description.

Evolutionary science has many lessons for our online communities

David Bollier offers a very interesting overview perspective of a workshop co-sponsored by the Berkman Centre and The Gruter Institute.The workshop, involving lawyers, biologists, social scientists, technologists and policy experts, focussed on what evolutionary science and "commons scholarship" can teach us about the social architecture of co-operative on-line communities ('on-line commons').

Very interesting article in The Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize, Bacteria and the power of teamwork, which reveals the amazing ability of bacteria to "quorum sense" - i.e. know when they have critical mass to achieve their objective. Quorum Sensing is hugely important for human groups and one we often get badly wrong!