Collective Intelligence

Collective Intelligence is a term that has been around for quite sometime but has taken off with the creation of the Internet. Jenkins et al (2006) describes Collective Intelligence as “the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal” (p. 71). I personally believe that this is a great thing, but also has some dangers because of the lack of judgment the new digital natives have with respect to information, as discussed in a previous blog. There are many examples of collective intelligence in media, including: Social Networking, Search Engines and Wikipedia. For starters, social network sites like Facebook and Twitter allow individuals to share information regarding any information they want to discuss. From there, other individuals from anywhere around the world can comment information regarding the same topic or their own opinions. For example, individuals can share their opinion on a movie or a book, and others can share their opinions as well and all this information will influence others. This is where judgment plays a role within gathering information from other people because no one knows the credibility of what is being said or whether it is just personal belief.

In terms of Search Engines, Google and Yahoo take collective knowledge of people all around the world and make it available to everyone who has access to the Internet. This is a relatively new way to integrate people and computers and share knowledge in an easy way about a common topic. I can say from personal experience since I use these search engines on a daily basis, they are a great tool to gain information that other people have and I find it quite interesting to learn about other peoples point of view on a topic I am intending to learn about.

Finally, Wikipedia is a great example of collective intelligence but is one that needs the most judgment since anyone can edit and add information on the wiki webpages. Anyone from around the world can produce intellectual information but those works can be altered from anyone on the Internet. The collective knowledge of random individuals can provide to the webpage and provide valued work or incorrect work. Although these webpages are monitored fairly frequently, there has been webpages found that say all incorrect information because someone is trying to be funny. If people do not check the credibility of what they are reading on Wikipedia, trouble can be caused (Lakhani, Malone, & Pentland, 2007).

The following images are negative examples of collective intelligence on Wikipedia webpages.

References

Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Weigel, M., & Clinton, K. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21^st century. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Lakhani, K., Malone, T., & Pentland, A. (2007, October 4). Collective intelligence: Summary. Message posted to http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/forums/collective_intelligence.html