Here is a fun talk I have given at IgniteSF and at Nokia Ideascamp on the connection between Jewish Culture and the Social Web. This only skims the surface of all the similarities but it is a fun start. Once I started down the path I kept finding more and more connections that made sense.
Basically - if you want to understand how our society and business worlds need to adapt to a networked, emergent, decentralized world take a look at how Jewish culture has survived in Diaspora for 5771 years. There is a real framework for co-creation, crowdsourcing, participation, attribution [aka Creative Commons] etc. We get this stuff. [Note: I am sure that other decentralized cultures and/or religions may share similarities as well - but this is the one I am an expert in]. The entire construct of the Tummelvision podcast that I host with Heather Gold and Kevin Marks comes from this deep understanding that learning and innovating in a meshed world requires art and science. Balancing enough structure with organic emergence and enabling people to provide the connective tissue is how it all works - kinda like Judaism. Enjoy.
Note - More on this topic posted sporadically over at PeopleoftheLink
Note: no text notes but hopefully you get the gist of it.