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In his short 1963 paper, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?",
Edmund Gettier presented two effective counterexamples to the JTB
analysis (Gettier 1963). The second of these goes as follows. Suppose
Smith has good evidence for the false proposition






1. Jones owns a
   Ford.^[5]
   
2. Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Boston.
3. Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona.
4. Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk.







Since (1) entails each of the propositions (2) through (4), and since
Smith recognizes these entailments, he is justified in believing each
of propositions (2)-(4). Now suppose that, by sheer coincidence, Brown
is indeed in Barcelona. Given these assumptions, we may say that
Smith, when he believes (3), holds a justified true belief. However,
is Smith's belief an instance of knowledge? Since Smith has no
evidence whatever as to Brown's whereabouts, and so believes what is
true only because of luck, the answer would have to be
‘no’. Consequently, the three conditions of the JTB
account — truth, belief, and justification — are not
sufficient for
knowledge.^[6]
How must the analysis of knowledge be modified to make it immune to
cases like the one we just considered? This is what is commonly
referred to as the "Gettier problem".

What is important is not who came up with the theory (because we know that what I will say is that the theory is emergent from the works of numerous writers) but rather what the salient points are of the theory. From the work just cited, we can identify three major points (and those who care to look will find those points repeated throughout my own writing):


1. knowledge is not an object, but a series of flows; it is a process, not a product
   
2. it is produced not in the minds of people but in the interactions between people
3. the idea of acquiring knowledge, as a series of truths, is obsolete

These point to a conception of knowledge dramatically from the Cartesian foundation or the Platonic form, a conception of knowledge that challenges even the Aristotlean categpry and the Newtonian law of nature. In particular, what seems to me to be relevant, is that the knowledge thus produced is:

1. non-propositional, that is, not sharp, definite, precise, expressible in language
2. non-discrete, that is, not located in any given place or instantiated in any particular form
3. non-objective, that is, independent of any given perspective, point of view, or experience

Mass collaboration differs from mass cooperation in that the creative acts taking place requires the emergence of jointly developed shared understandings. Conversely, group members involved in a cooperation needn't engage in a joint negotiation of understanding (from which shared understandings emerge), they may simply execute instructions willingly.

Another important distinction is the borders around which a mass cooperation can be defined. Due to the extremely general characteristics and lack of need for fine grain negotiation and consensus when cooperating, the entire Internet, a city and even the global economy may be regarded as a mass cooperation. Thus a mass collaboration is more refined and complex in its process and production on the level of collective engagement.