The Village Green

Ewan McIntosh, from edu.blogs.com, poses an interesting question about individual vs. collective intelligence.

“So we reach a key question in trying to work out where the collective intelligence boon of the web begins: how do we know the tipping point where collective creativity and collective pulling of knowledge is greater than the specialisation and ingenuity of one person or a smaller number of these ‘ingenious individuals’?”

I posted a comment in response, which is also copied here below:

There may be no understandable answer to your question. I’m not sure that individuals can see as clearly the full range of implications of collective intelligence as they can the work of one or more ingenious individuals. Take the growth of a city over time into consideration.

No one person had a vision for the city where I live. In fact, much of the early effort that shaped its character was the result of specific local necessity and not work committed in tandem. As a result, we have streets that follow a river in one area, while they are east/west and north/south in others. Most individuals don’t realize the difference in street directions nor do they know how that impacts the character of the city itself, but it clearly defines ‘downtown’.

Just as I’m mostly aware of my own neighborhood and only marginally connected to the vast majority of events of the city around me, the collective impact of dozens of neighborhoods and their citizens is undeniable but complicated and difficult to assess. It isn’t necessary for individual components of large collective systems to work toward the same goal in order to have significant outcomes. It is, however, much harder for those components to understand or impact those outcomes.

It may be informative to add Malcolm Gladwell’s presentation about the ‘one genius’ vs ‘many smart guys’ from the New Yorker Magazine’s ‘Genius: 2012′ conference to the discussion. http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/gladwell

As for the suggestion of Second Life or the Sims as a great piece of art, I can only point to early cave paintings as the closest equivalent in terms of historical significance. Over time, these specific digital artifacts will be seen as very primitive efforts and not the pinnacle of a reformation.

http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2007/08/kevin-kellypopt.html#comment-79892069