The Starfish And The Spider
   HOME
*





The Starfish And The Spider
''The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations'' is a 2006 book by Ori Brafman (author of the 2010 book ''Click: The Magic of Instant Connections'') and Rod Beckstrom. It is an exploration of the implications of the rise of decentralized organizations such as Grokster and Wikipedia. The book contrasts them to centralized organizations, such as ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', using compendia of knowledge as examples. The spider and starfish analogy refers to the contrasting biological nature of the respective organisms, starfish having a decentralized neural structure permitting regeneration. In addition to giving historical examples of decentralized organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous and the Apaches and analyzing their nature in contrast to centralized organizations, the book considers conflict between centralized and decentralized organizations, including the "If you can't beat them, join them" solution of creating hybrid organization ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Aztec Empire
The Aztec Empire or the Triple Alliance ( nci, Ēxcān Tlahtōlōyān, jéːʃkaːn̥ t͡ɬaʔtoːˈlóːjaːn̥ was an alliance of three Nahua city-states: , , and . These three city-states ruled that area in and around the Valley of Mexico from 1428 until the combined forces of the Spanish and their native allies who ruled under defeated them in 1521. The alliance was formed from the victorious factions of a civil war fought between the city of and its former tributary provinces. Despite the initial conception of the empire as an alliance of three self-governed city-states, the capital became dominant militarily. By the time the Spanish arrived in 1519, the lands of the alliance were effectively ruled from , while other partners of the alliance had taken subsidiary roles. The alliance waged wars of conquest and expanded after its formation. The alliance controlled most of central Mexico at its height, as well as some more distant territories within Mesoamerica, such ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Granville Sharp
Granville Sharp (10 November 1735 – 6 July 1813) was one of the first British campaigners for the abolition of the slave trade. He also involved himself in trying to correct other social injustices. Sharp formulated the plan to settle black people in Sierra Leone, and founded the St George's Bay Company, a forerunner of the Sierra Leone Company. His efforts led to both the founding of the Province of Freedom, and later on Freetown, Sierra Leone, and so he is considered to be one of the founding fathers of Sierra Leone. He was also a biblical scholar, a classicist, and a talented musician. Life Granville Sharp was the son of Judith Wheler (d. 1757) and Thomas Sharp (1693–1759), Archdeacon of Northumberland, prolific theological writer and biographer of his father, John Sharp, Archbishop of York. Judith was the daughter of travel writer George Wheler and Grace née Higgons, who grew up in the political household of Sir Thomas Higgons. Sharp was born in Durham in 1735. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Burning Man
Burning Man is an event focused on community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance held annually in the western United States. The name of the event comes from its culminating ceremony: the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, referred to as the Man, that occurs on the penultimate night of Burning Man, which is the Saturday evening before Labor Day. The event has been located since 1991 at Black Rock City in northwestern Nevada, a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert about north-northeast of Reno. As outlined by Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey in 2004, the event is guided by ten principles: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy. The event originated on June 22, 1986, on Baker Beach in San Francisco as a small function organized by Larry Harvey and Jerry James, the builders of the first Man. It has since b ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history. It is consistently one of the 10 most popular websites ranked by Similarweb and formerly Alexa; Wikipedia was ranked the 5th most popular site in the world. It is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American non-profit organization funded mainly through donations. Wikipedia was launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001. Sanger coined its name as a blend of ''wiki'' and '' encyclopedia''. Wales was influenced by the " spontaneous order" ideas associated with Friedrich Hayek and the Austrian School of economics after being exposed to these ideas by the libertarian economist Mark Thornton. Initially available only in English, versions in other languages were quickly developed. Its combin ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the Apache HTTP Server, and incorporated on March 25, 1999. As of 2021, it includes approximately 1000 members. The Apache Software Foundation is a decentralized open source community of developers. The software they produce is distributed under the terms of the Apache License and is a non-copyleft form of free and open-source software (FOSS). The Apache projects are characterized by a collaborative, consensus-based development process and an open and pragmatic software license, which is to say that it allows developers who receive the software freely, to re-distribute it under nonfree terms. Each project is managed by a self-selected team of technical experts who are active contributors to the project. The ASF is a meritocracy, implying ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Craigslist
Craigslist (stylized as craigslist) is an American classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums. Craig Newmark began the service in 1995 as an email distribution list to friends, featuring local events in the San Francisco Bay Area. It became a web-based service in 1996 and expanded into other classified categories. It started expanding to other U.S. and Canadian cities in 2000, and now covers 70 countries. History Having observed people helping one another in friendly, social, and trusting communal ways on the Internet via the WELL, MindVox and Usenet, and feeling isolated as a relative newcomer to San Francisco, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark decided to create something similar for local events. In early 1995, he began an email distribution list to friends. Most of the early postings were submitted by Newmark and were notices of social events of inte ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Craig Newmark
Craig Alexander Newmark (born December 6, 1952) is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist best known as the founder of the classifieds website Craigslist. Prior to founding Craigslist, he worked as a computer programmer for companies such as IBM, Bank of America, and Charles Schwab. Newmark served as chief executive officer of Craigslist from its founding until 2000. He founded Craig Newmark Philanthropies in 2015. Early life and education Newmark, the son of Joyce and Lee Newmark, was born to a Jewish family in 1952 in Morristown, New Jersey. As a child, Newmark liked science fiction and comic books, and wanted to become a paleontologist. Newmark's mother was a bookkeeper and his father was an insurance and meat salesman. When Newmark was thirteen, his father died from cancer. His mother then moved him and his younger brother, Jeff, to Jacob Ford Village. As a teenager, Newmark attended Morristown High School, where he became interested in physics. He wore tape ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Skype
Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, debit-based calls to landline and mobile telephones (over traditional telephone networks), and other features. Skype is available on various desktop, mobile, and video game console platforms. Skype was created by Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and four Estonian developers and first released in August 2003. In September 2005, eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion. In September 2009, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board bought 65% of Skype for $1.9 billion from eBay, valuing the business at $2.92 billion. In May 2011, Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion and used it to replace their Windows Live Messenger. As of 2011, most of the development team and 44% of all the division' ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Niklas Zennstrom
Niklas is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Stare Miasto, within Konin County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. It lies approximately south of Stare Miasto, south of Konin, and east of the regional capital Poznań Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint Joh .... References Niklas {{Konin-geo-stub ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Napster
Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application. It originally launched on June 1, 1999, with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Shawn Fanning, Sean Parker, and Hugo Sáez Contreras. As the software became popular, the company ran into legal difficulties over copyright infringement. It ceased operations in 2001 after losing a wave of lawsuits and filed for bankruptcy in June 2002. Later, more decentralized projects followed Napster's P2P file-sharing example, such as Gnutella, Freenet, FastTrack, and Soulseek. Some services and software, like AudioGalaxy, LimeWire, Scour, Kazaa / Grokster, Madster, and eDonkey2000, were also brought down or changed due to copyright issues. Napster's assets were eventually acquired by Roxio, and it re-emerged as an online music store. Best Buy later purchased the service and merged it with its Rhapsody service on December ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Netcom (United States)
NETCOM On-Line Communication Services, Inc. was an Internet service provider headquartered in San Jose, California. Early history Netcom was established in 1988 by Bob Rieger, an information systems engineer for Lockheed Corporation, Lockheed and Bill Gitow of System V. The company started off in San Jose, California as a service to allow local students to access university networks off-campus. The original accounts were all dialup shell accounts on Intel 80386 Tandy Corporation, Tandy IBM PC compatible, PCs running Xenix, with email addresses in the format of user@netcom.com. Netcom soon served 95% of the San Francisco Bay Area. They later expanded to serve other areas and replaced the Tandy PCs with equipment from Sun Microsystems. When first launched, Rieger was the only system administrator for the company. Users would call him early in the morning to fix Internet access issues until he hired night staff. In 1992, the company was incorporated. As the World Wide Web becam ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]