Why should people collaborate?

The obvious question to ask is: "Why should anyone want to be part of someone else's guidance system?" The missile will be homing in on the other person's problems and goals, not their own.

The reason would be either for reward, payment or reciprocation. When it is for payment, it's a straight forward business arrangement: paying for time and expertise. Often though, the assistance will not involve any exchange of money but be a reciprocal arrangement: "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours". Most of an individual's contacts will have a similar system of contacts themselves, which they will use to home in on their own goals and problems. This is illustrated in figure 15.5

If an individual's contacts are treated as reciprocal collaborative associations, it can be seen how every individual can form a group of contacts for themselves by means of a tit-for-tat strategy. Each contact being acquired as a result of a series of cooperative associations that start off slowly, growing stronger at each reciprocation of a favour. Because a tit-for-tat strategy provides equal benefit on both sides, each participant of a successful outcome gains the other as a trusted and reliable partner.

In this way, every person would be in complete control of their own systems which they can focus on their own goals and problems. The cost to them, of maintaining this system, would be the time they spent helping their contacts. But, this is a typical non zero sum game situation where everyone can gain. Each would help the other by imparting knowledge that they already possess so the cost to them would be very little. Yet, the expert help or advice received would be of great value to the recipient. It would be a win-win situation for everyone. All it takes to put into effect is suitable a communication strategy to initiate and cultivate the relationship. This would involve negotiating the message filtering of the people in the environment of small- world clusters.