If Miles Davis were here today, we bet he’d be proud of the part he played in inspiring the current internet movement. From unconferences to open source software, musical tendencies have been interwoven in what has come to be called “web2.0.”

Jazz musicians are masters at improvisation to the point of seeming telepathic. Pre-written music and carefully crafted songs are catalysts for experimentation, not ends in themselves. Musicians also seek to blur the line between the audience and presenter and build a community around their concerts, with the belief that increased participation will enrich the experience as well as the music. And we cannot forget the open source movement pioneered by the Grateful Dead – the band encouraged taping of concerts, with the only rule being that tapers could not sell tapes for profit.

On the internet today, we similarly seek new avenues for collaboration that allow for cumulative creativity and the ability to use others’ ideas as springboards. Where jam sessions are an ‘aggregation tool’ for musicians, the web 2.0 movement seeks its own mechanisms with which to speak with one voice and capture collective wisdom. We see quintessential web 2.0 websites like Digg and Facebook dependent upon a symbiosis among community members not so different from the connection between musicians in a band. And at an “unconference,” blurred lines between the audience and presenter and a belief in improvisation allows anyone to present and the whole group to decide which subjects will be covered on the fly.

Such unstructured and decentralized solutions to otherwise complicated problems (such as planning a multi-day conference) has become the basis for the next step in the evolution of the internet. The MixedInk collaborative writing platform is inspired by the world of music. It allows people to come together spontaneously and fluidly to improvise and innovate, build on and improve upon what has already been started, and create a unified output that reflects the energy and nuanced views of each of its participants.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 7:44 am and is filed under collaboration, collaborative writing, music, user-generated content, web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.