Collective intelligence, as characterized by Peter Russell (1983), Tom Atlee (1993), Pierre Lévy (1994), Howard Bloom (1995), Francis Heylighen (1995), Douglas Engelbart, Cliff Joslyn, Ron Dembo, Gottfried Mayer-Kress (2003) and other theorists, is an intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals, an intelligence that seemingly has a mind of its own.
Collective intelligence appears in a wide variety of forms of consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans, and computers. The study of collective intelligence may properly be considered a subfield of sociology, of computer science, and of mass behavior--a field that studies collective behavior from the level of quarks to the level of bacterial, plant, animal, and human societies. Some figures like Tom Atlee prefer to focus on collective intelligence primarily in humans and actively work to upgrade what Howard Bloom calls "the group IQ". Atlee feels that collective intelligence can be encouraged "to overcome 'groupthink' and individual cognitive bias in order to allow a collective to cooperate on one process-while achieving enhanced intellectual performance." One CI pioneer, George Pór, defined the collective intelligence phenomenon as "the capacity of human communities to evolve towards higher order complexity and harmony, through such innovation mechanisms as differentiation and integration, competition and collaboration. "[1] Tom Atlee and George Pór state that "collective intelligence also involves achieving a single focus of attention and standard of metrics which provide an appropriate threshold of action". Their approach is rooted in Scientific Community Metaphor. [original post] > General concepts > "Howard Bloom traces the evolution of collective intelligence from the > days of our bacterial ancestors 3.5 billion years ago to the present > and demonstrates how a multi-species intelligence has worked since the > beginning of life. [2] > > Tom Atlee and George Pór, on the other hand, feel that while group > theory and artificial intelligence have something to offer, the field > of collective intelligence should be seen by some as primarily a human > enterprise in which mind-sets, a willingness to share, and an openness > to the value of distributed intelligence for the common good are > paramount. Individuals who respect collective intelligence, say Atlee > and Pór, are confident of their own abilities and recognize that the > whole is indeed greater than the sum of any individual parts. > > >From Pór and Atlee's point of view, maximizing collective > >intelligence > relies on the ability of an organization to accept and develop "The > Golden Suggestion", which is any potentially useful input from any member. > Groupthink often hampers collective intelligence by limiting input to > a select few individuals or filtering potential Golden Suggestions > without fully developing them to implementation." > > Full text > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_intelligence Symbiotic intelligence is the capacity of a group to behave - under certain conditions - more intelligently than its individual members. This idea was pioneered by Norman Johnson at LANL who studied the role of cooperation and symbiosis in evolution. Self-organizing groups of ordinary people potentially can provide better solutions to complex problems than ones produced by experts. The architecture of interaction among members of such groups and integration of their decisions into the group decision are very important for these groups to be symbiotic. Collective intelligence is an amplification of the precepts of the Founding Fathers, as represented by Thomas Jefferson in his statement, "A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry." During the industrial era, schools and corporations took a turn toward separating elites from the people they expected to follow them. Both government and private sector organizations glorified bureaucracy and, with bureaucracy, secrecy and compartmentalized knowledge. In the past twenty years, a body of knowledge has emerged which demonstrates that secrecy is actually pathological, and enables selfish decisions against the public interest. Collective intelligence restores the power of the people over their society, and neutralizes the power of vested interests that manipulate information to concentrate wealth. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
