In a recent entry, Sam Rose has explained the difference between two related concepts, nl. the Wisdom of Crowds, and Collective Intelligence.
“According to Henry Jenkins, the “wisdom of crowds†is applicable towards aggregating dispersed knowledge about quantifiable, objective data, while “collective intelligence†is intelligence that derives from collective behavior and stigmergic, and/or consensus decision making.
The need for independence among “crowd†members contrasts with the requirement for connection and collaboration to see collective intelligence work.
The Wisdom of Crowds generally breaks down when information sharing/group think starts to skew and bias people towards errors. Collective Intelligence overcomes this by looking at different ways that groups can systematically enhance and improve collaboration and cooperation.”
More recently, blogger Kathy Sierra made a similar meditation, which she entitles the Dumbness of Crowds. This happens when the isolation requirement of the Wisdom of Crowd method is forgotten, while the enhancement requirements for Collective Intelligence are not applied either.
In this case, only groupthing can result. The whole entry is worth reading, and she then also gives an interesting list of examples:
“Collective intelligence” is a pile of people writing Amazon book reviews.
“Dumbness of Crowds” is a pile of people collaborating on a wiki to collectively author a book.
(Not that there aren’t exceptions, but that’s just what they are–rare exceptions for things like reference books. I’m extremely skeptical that a group will produce even a remotely decent novel, for example. Most fiction suffers even with just two authors.)
“Collective Intelligence” is all the photos on Flickr, taken by individuals on their own, and the new ideas created from that pool of photos (and the API).
“Dumbness of Crowds” is expecting a group of people to create and edit a photo together.
“Collective Intelligence” is about getting input and ideas from many different people and perspectives.
“Dumbness of Crowds” is blindly averaging the input of many different people, and expecting a breakthrough.
(It’s not always the averaging that’s the problem it’s the blindly part)
“Collective Intelligence” is about the community on Threadless, voting and discussing t-shirts designed by individuals.
“Dumbness of Crowds” would be expecting the Threadless community to actually design the t-shirts together as a group.
i think this is a good discussion and perhaps you could dive into to specifying exceptions and finding a general rule for “the dumbness of crowds”. I think a lot of the dumbness in the case of working together comes from a lack of listening, and then splashing your own style over another’s work without trying to create a synthesis. Recently someone designed a logo for our open-source project and threw up the design on flickr. Another designer then came along and added a small but crucial touch to make the initial idea stronger, almost as if correcting a spelling mistake on a wiki or blog post to maintain the idea’s continuity. The further a person moves away from the original strand of creation, the nearer you get to a fork in the road.
James,
I’ll add one factor that from experiences, creates dumb teams, and that is ‘representationality’. In large companies, though they often pay lipservice to teams and use them a lot, many times though, they are inoperative. The reason is that the people sitting in the team are not there as individuals seeking optimal solutions, but represent some group or hierarch that is there to defend its interest and turf. This is pretty much the same situation as in the political arena, where politics is not the search for the best solution, but a negotiation of interests. Both aspects are needed, and reconciling them is a big challenge. The advantage of peer governance is that there is no representationality and hence it can devote its energy to solving problems more readily.