This occurs even among strangers when we have no intention to connect or affiliate with the other person.

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She had wanted to think of him at home, with his family and his girl, not alone in some foreign city, among strangers.

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On the streets too, politics is discussed openly, even among strangers.

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Shirky looks at online collaboration and knowledge aggregation among strangers, in the creation of everything from collections of embarrassing photos to documented human rights abuses, as the birth of a new sociopolitical force in the world.

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With some guests gathered on throw pillows around a low table, and others on bar stools at the kitchen counter, we talked of food and travel, photography and arranged marriages (a few glasses of wine among strangers often leads conversations in unexpected directions).

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This, to digital immigrants, may sound like a recipe for anarchic chaos, until they visit, for instance, wikipedia.org, an online encyclopaedia that is growing dramatically richer by the day through exactly this spontaneous (and surprisingly orderly) collaboration among strangers.

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The social network has, in a little over six years, picked up 500 million users, sucked up a good bit of the world's free time, and not incidentally made possible new forms of organization among strangers that have affected the policies of nations.

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