The human instinct to share knowledge and give advice is not new. Nor is it unusual for a company's customers to work together. Car enthusiasts have long helped each other tweak a little more horsepower out of their engines. Camera clubs help members take better pictures. But with the web, this collaboration is lifted to a global scale with virtually unlimited membership.
Knowledge exchanges occur in real time, at the speed of light.
The net accelerates the system's metabolism. What may have taken centuries in the past can now occur in weeks, or even days.