Leadership in an Internet World

So I just read a very interesting piece about Barak Obama as the "Wiki-candidate"in the New York Times and the essay got me to thinking about the tension between leadership and collaboration. "Collaboration," of course, comes straight from the element "labor," and, and thus, means "to work together." The OED provides a citation from 1860 as the first printed instance of the word; I can't help but notice that date as significant.

Charles Reade, in whose Eighth Commandment, the word appears, as an adaptation of the French "collaborateur," shared clear sympathies with trade unionists and the language of the trade union permeates his work. The Eighth Commandment, begins with a description of "literary commerce," which is like all other "trades and transactions." So although the French "collaborateur" has early on a literary sense (the OED cites 1801 as the first instance of the word as a non-nativized form meaning "One who works in conjunction with another or others; esp. in literary, artistic, or scientific work."), I can't help but think that the other connotations of labor circulating in the 19th century wouldn't have colored Reade's usage as well.

In the quasi-allegorical section in which "collaboration" appears, the "collaborateur" is alternately described as a "literary accomplice," an "associated calligrapher," and a "copyist." In effect, the allegory suggests the exploitation of the "co-writer" for the gain of the bigger name and plays with the notion of the "literary source." Nevertheless, Reade suggests that the collaborateur, under the copyright treaties of the period, comes out on the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

So I find the now positive sense of "collaboration," especially in the sense of web-based collaboration (witness Wikipedia, etc.) quite interesting. No matter how many people collaborate on a single project, glory (and blame) is difficult to distribute, and inevitably goes to the leader. A collaborator, in the literary sense, remains the secondary entity--the second name in the list, the person forgotten. A quick survey of great collaborators will serve: the economic philosophy is not "MarxandEngelism" but Marxism. No one remembers Pierre Curie, only his wife, who hasn't even retained her first name. Few have heard of Roy Mottelson, but many would recognize the name Niels Bohr.

What, therefore, does the collaborator risk? Must a collaborator be comfortable with anonymity? What is the reward for collaboration? And which leader should be applauded? The leader who values collaboration or the leader who shuns it? All that said, I believe that a leader who values collaboration, encourages it, and spurs it, is much better for any community, because there is less likelihood of tyranny; but I fear that a leader who honors collaboration might be perceived, come election-time as deficient compared to a more autocratic personality. Perhaps the key to success for Democrats will consist in a change in our understanding of collaboration. The collaborator musn't be the uncredited ghost-writer, or the power behind the throne, but the workman set to a task in service of an overwhelmingly clear vision.