The World Is Flat

Generally speaking, imagination is the product of two shaping forces. One is the narratives that people are nurtured on-the stories and myths they and their religious and national leaders tell themselves-and how those narratives feed their imaginations one way or another. The other is the context in which people grow up, which has a huge impact on shaping how they see the world and others. Outsiders cannot get inside and adjust the Mexican or Arab or Chinese narrative any more than they can get inside the American one. Only they can reinterpret their narrative, make it more tolerant or forward looking, and adapt it to modernity. No one can do that for them or even with them. But one can think about how to collaborate with others to change their context-the context within which people grow up and live their daily lives-to help nurture more people with the imagination of 11/9 than 9/11. Let me offer a few examples.

eBay

Meg Whitman, the CEO of eBay, once told me a wonderful story that went like this: “We took eBay public in September 1998, in the middle of the dot-com boom. And in September and October our stock would go up eighty points and down fifty in a single day. I thought, 'This is insane.' Anyway, one day I am minding my own business, sitting in my own cubicle, and my secretary runs over and says to me, 'Meg, it's Arthur Levitt [chairman] of the SEC on the phone.'” The Securities and Exchange Commission oversees the stock market and is always concerned about issues of volatility in a stock and whether there is manipulation behind it. In those days, for a CEO to hear that “Arthur Levitt is on the line” was not a good way to start the day.

“So I called my general counsel,” said Whitman, “who came over from his cubicle, and he was white like a sheet. We called Levitt back together and we put him on the speakerphone, and I said, 'Hi, it's Meg Whitman of eBay.' And he said, 'Hi, it's Arthur Levitt of the SEC. I don't know you and have never met you but I know that you just went public and I want to know: How did it go? Were we [the SEC] customer-friendly?' And so we breathed a sigh of relief, and we talked about that a little bit. And then [Levitt] said, 'Well, actually, another reason that I am calling is that I just got my tenth positive feedback on eBay and have earned my yellow star. And I am so proud.' And then he said, 'I am actually a collector of Depression-era glass, post-1929, and so I have bought and sold on eBay and you get feedback as a buyer and seller. And I thought you would just like to know.'”

Every eBay user has a feedback profile made up of comments from other eBay users who have done transactions with him or her, relating to whether the goods bought or sold were as expected and the transaction went off smoothly. This constitutes your official “eBay reputation.” You get +1 point for each positive comment, 0 points for each neutral comment, and -1 for each negative comment. A colored star icon is attached to your user ID on eBay for ten or more feedback points. My user ID on eBay might be TOMF (50) and a blue star, which means that I have received positive feedback comments from fifty other eBay users. Next to that is a box that will tell you whether the seller has had 100 percent positive feedback comments or less, and also give you the chance to click and read all the buyers' comments about that seller.

The point, said Whitman, is that “I think every human being, Arthur Levitt or the janitor or the waitress or the doctor or the professor, needs and craves validation and positive feedback.” And the big misconception is to think that it has to be money. “It can be really small things,” said Whitman, “telling someone, 'You did a really great job, you were recognized as doing a great history paper.' Our users say to us [about eBay's star system], 'Where else can you wake up in the morning and see how much people like you?'”

But what is so striking, said Whitman, is that the overwhelming majority of feedback on eBay is positive. That's interesting. People don't usually write Wal-Mart managers to compliment them on a fabulous purchase. But when you are part of a community that you feel ownership in, it is different. You have a stake. “The highest number of feedback we have is well over 250,000 positive comments, and you can see each one,” said Whitman. “You can see the entire history of each buyer and seller, and we have introduced the ability to rebut... You cannot be anonymous on eBay. If you are not willing to say who you are, you should not be saying it. And it became the norm of the community really fast... We are not running an exchange-we are running a community.” Indeed, with 105 million registered users from 190 countries trading more than $35 billion in products annually, eBay is actually a self-governing nation-state-the V.R.e., the Virtual Republic of eBay.