There is a new group at MIT, the Center for Collective Intelligence. Their sites says:
“While people have talked about collective intelligence for decades, new communication technologies—especially the Internet—now allow huge numbers of people all over the planet to work together in new ways. The recent successes of systems like Google and Wikipedia suggest that the time is now ripe for many more such systems, and the goal of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence is to understand how to take advantage of these possibilities. Our basic research question is: How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?”
This is a noble goal and a place to watch. Clicking on the link Enterprise Web 2.0 brings you to a project called We Are Smarter Than Me, the book/project’s home is an online community and wiki managed by Shared Insights where business professionals are encouraged to research, discuss and write about the impact of social networks on traditional business functions.
There was a poll on the site - and results so far. It will be interesting to see the results over time.
1. Which of the following business functions are most likely to be replaced by "community"?
Marketing 47% (91)
PR 30% (57)
Distribution 14%(27)
Operations 9% (18)
In the description, Tom Malone also announced “another wiki called The Handbook of Collective Intelligence which he hopes will become a definitive survey of the field of collective intelligence, summarizing what is known, providing references to sources for further information, and suggesting possibilities for future research.”
Thanks to John Maloney for pointing this out. It will be worth watching and joining.
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