All right stop, Collaborate and Listen!

Egypt is a popular place for tourists from around the globe to gather. One of its largest attractions is the Great Pyramid of Giza, which also known as Khufu’s Great Pyramid. This pyramid is over 4,500 years old and is the last-standing of the “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World” (Lee).  There are an uncountable amount of people who will travel hundreds of miles just to ogle at this and other massive structures of nothing but decaying limestone. All of them will be frozen in time pondering the only problem with the pyramids. We must ask, how could have primitive humans erected such mass structure with the lack of modern technology and tools?  A small percentage of us won’t be able to comprehend the concept of humans creating such structure and hide behind the speculation that the builders had assistance from an “other-worldly” force, namely extraterrestrials. The rest of the spectators will be able to logically deduce the more reasonable solution to such problem. The solution that is called a work of massive collaboration.

A massive portion of our population is unaware of the importance of collaboration throughout history and in modern times. To entertain the concept we can rewind and ask, what is collaboration? Collaboration is one of the most important factors defining humanity’s existence. This tool is a crutch for past and modern architecture, engineering, research, construction, and most other fields of growth. The pyramids weren’t built by a small group of workers overnight. Khufu’s Pyramid was constructed in a matter of thirty years with a workforce of over 100,000 oppressed slaves (Krystek). Although thirty years seems a long time for even a force of 100,000 workers, we can break this down to put the construction into perspective. First, the workers weren’t paid and had little to no incentive or compensation, if anything it was the promised “freedom” upon completion of the pyramid. By this we know the workers didn’t want to do this work. To them, they were just creating an over-sized tombstone, not a wonder of the ancient world. Even this alone can’t justify the full thirty years for over 100,000 workers. Next we have to realize that each of the 2,300,000 limestone blocks weighed 2.5 tons each, which is approximately the weight of a large truck or SUV.  We also have to remember how the stones weren’t just built up from the ground where the pyramids are. Most of the stones were quarried off-site in places as far as 600-miles away! Transporting then sculpting and finally stacking 2,300,000 SUVs hundreds of miles away from which they came without the use of any mechanical lifts or assists in a matter of 30 years is impressive. This is also considering that when the base was completed each layer after was more and more work; the same progression of work is why the cap, only the top-most portion of the pyramid, took 10 years alone to perfect.

If 100,000 workers with no incentive whatsoever could pull-off such feat then imagine what 3,000,000,000 incentive-driven workers could accomplish! 3 Billions sounds like a lot, like too many people for one project. Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the soup, right? Wrong! The number 3 billion comes from an estimated 3.091 billion users on the internet at any given time. Statisticians would agree that the number of users on the internet grow at a steady and linear rate or that it even follows a slow but sure exponential curve (Internet Live Stats). These numbers may seem irrelevant until it is revealed that collaboration doesn’t have to be on-site anymore. What if the Pharaoh Khnum-Khufu himself could have out-sourced his laborers, and had a workforce of 30 million (estimated population for circa 3000 BC)? The pyramids would have been completed in a matter of hours, provided it was physically possibly for 30 million people to work in such small space together without getting in the way of one another, or spoiling the soup for that matter. If only there were some way an absurdly large task-force could be set to a common goal without interfering with one-another. Oh wait, there is! It’s called the internet, and as mentioned before it has about 3 billion users workers.

Teamwork is collaboration and has been and always will be important in achieving any greater goals. Collaboration isn’t a trait unique to humans. Collaboration is a natural strategy of survival and is seen in all walks of the animal kingdom. I can reference mutually-beneficial living organisms who help each other survive (most common fish), or a pack of wild dogs who stalk and kill their prey together then share the spoils of hunt, or monkeys that have been observed working together in a laboratory environment to obtain food, or any other examples of teamwork in nature. It won’t matter where it is a reference to because collaboration is in nearly every biome, every kingdom, every genus. Collaboration is natural for a species, or a pack of said species, to survive and thrive. Humans are no exception to this rule.

This relatively new ‘mass’-collaboration has limitless applications in every field. Using the will-power, openly or subliminally, of hundreds of millions of people could benefit any cause. There are projects which use gamers’ addictions to puzzle-solving to map neurons of the brain and a strategy game where players are defending a rain-forest where the most successful strategies would be implemented in real-life to protect the actual rain-forests from poachers. If someone proposed  a really big project there are two ways he could do it: he could befriend a millionaire philanthropist who would back and financially support his goals; or he could befriend a salesman. A salesman because they would be someone with a pitch who could sell his ideas and make them appealing to the average internet user, who might just unknowingly be his next employee.

Works Cited

Krystek, Lee. “Seven Wonder of the Ancient World: Khufu’s Great Pyramid.” Seven Wonder of the Ancient World: Khufu’s Great Pyramid. Web. 1 Mar. 2015. <http://www.unmuseum.org/kpyramid.htm&gt;.

Internet Live Stats. “Internet Users” Internet Live Stats. Web. 25 Mar. 2015. <http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/;.