To answer this, I will be drawing on an excellent answer by CI pioneer George Por.

I want to precede it with my own version of a nested hierarchy of forms of knowedge, which I developed back in my cybrarian days in the early nineties.

Data are just snippets, the basic units that are as yet unconnected.

Information is connected/correlated data.

Knowledge is when information is integrating in a pre-existing body of …. Knowledge

(I’m aware that’s a circular definition, but that is because we always already have knowledge, from inside the womb onwards, at which point it somehow emerges, but that’s a question for scientists).

This is important: knowledge is always situated, always needs to be integrated, digested by a person or group or institution.

Finally, when this knowledge is applied, to action, i.e. to a choice involving the future, we have intelligence.

Intelligence becomes wisdom when it is totally integrated in life, when we walk the talk.

So, if we know what intelligence is, and we know what peer to peer is, i.e. the relational dynamic between peers in a distributed network of people, then how are both concepts related?

For the answer, I’m relying on George Por.

The short version of the answer is: collective intelligence is why we congregate as peers for. Learning from each other in view of individual and collective action, is why we engage as peers.

George Por:

‘I suggest an approach to define CI in terms of a domain of practice shared by a community of peers.

1. No Domain of Knowledge is separate from the community using it

A domain, in the context of communities of practice, is a “domain of knowledge worthy of the collective attention of a group of peers.” (Etienne Wenger) Suggesting the “communities of practice” approach to describe what CI is, we recognize that the definition of no domain of knowledge is separable from the community using and developing it. It helps us avoiding the trap of semantic debates, abstract theorizing, and the typical misunderstandings when practitioners of very different disciplines try to describe an object common to all.

In that sense, the question is not what is CI but what is CI to us as a potential community? What is our shared sense of the domain that we are engaged in? “What makes our domain a coherent body of knowledge? Where does it fit in the broader scheme of things? What exactly is our domain? Where does it stop?” (Etienne Wenger) There are as many definitions of CI as different kinds of discipline-oriented or mission-oriented communities practicing it.”

BUT, importantly, in his conclusion, George adds:

‘there are community straddlers with membership in multiple communities, and tools and techniques that can span and help cross-fertilizing multiple domains.’