Traditional theorists like Karl Marx, tend towards the negative when talking about large groups of people or “the masses.” If you’ve seen The Gladiator, then you know that Rome is ruled by a “mob” of people or the majority opinion. Generally the phrase is used to describe a large group of average people as lacking any good sense or attributes in general.

But there’s a growing counter-trend to this intellectual snobbery that more people means less value.

A few weeks ago I attended a dinner and then a lecture given by co-author of Macrowikinomics, Anthony D. Williams on a visit sponsored by ictQatar as part of their Connected Speakers series. Despite being a bestselling author and international speaker, he was kind enough to listen to everyone at the table, even when some people tended towards lengthy pontification.

The next night, at the lecture, he answered questions respectfully and thoroughly after speaking for nearly an hour and half

Now Williams himself is a fairly young guy, so maybe this is part of the reason that he is so down to earth.

Or maybe it’s because he and his co-author Don Tapscott have put into two bestselling books the idea that the masses can be harnessed as social, economic, and political engines of change.

Mass collaboration, or the idea that groups of people working together results in innovation, is the staple of the Williams-Tapscott franchise. First in Wikinomics and now with the sequel, they show how people working together can contribute substantially to the commercial market. From volunteers who mapped the night sky – even discovering a new type of stellar object – to those filling in the gaps in the human genome, Williams and Tapscott’s research is not only convincing, it’s empowering.

“Social networking is changing the way we access information,” Williams said, describing it as “a social web layer” over our world. What we used to think of as tools only for play – Facebook, Twitter – now have proven their worth as platforms to stage revolutions across the Middle East.

If you subscribe to this idea, then of course anyone you meet is not beneath you but an equal stakeholder and contributor in the pursuit of bettering our world and this may have been why Williams was so nice.

I felt energized and empowered after these two days of thinking of the possibilities to do good in each of us – instead of harm, which is what I had been grappling with for a week weeks. Williams’ version of humanity seemed much more positive, so I decided to test out mass collaboration at the first possible instance. My first opportunity was not far away: I was writing a guide for expats new to Qatar and I needed photos. Lots of photos. More than I had on my own in the 6 years I lived here. So I put it on Facebook and Twitter. I didn’t get tons and tons of replies, but I got enough.

Then I had other questions – a couple today even – that I tweeted and sure enough, answers coming right back. Where to buy bean bag chairs and what that fuzz on your sweater is called; from the mundane to the isoteric (what is the word “handbag” in different Arabic dialects?) social media helped me perfect ideas for a TV pilot I’m working on and also make our house more infant friendly.