So why was I sharing a picture of a roast chicken (food source) at a Spanish restaurant in NYC (foraging spot) with Foodspotting.com (my tribe)? I’m not getting paid for this activity, though the cost of taking the pic and uploading is vanishingly small. Am I being purely altruistic or is something else at work?
Inspired recently by Clay Shirky’s talk on his newest book, Cognitive Surplus, I took a brief tour through some of the foundational ideas behind generosity and altruism.
Our kindness to strangers may be mostly in our genes, but as Shirky and other point have pointed out, being in a network has its own benefits.
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