Social media and collective intelligence
In my previous post about a vision for a thrivable future, I received the question from a friend, how such a vision can be created and by whom. I answered that I believe the engagement and the fluid, democratic possibilities of the social media will have an important role in creating the vision. "Clearly, this vision should not be formulated with nation states and borders as a starting point. It has to fluid, borderless and participatory, which happen to be interesting aspects of social media."
Today, someone on twitter forwarded this important article. I lost track of who forwarded it. Someone deserves a thank you, it is a very interesting piece!
The article touches on what I was referring to above, about the fantastic power in the decentralised web of social networks. Through the article above I realize that what I am really looking for is collective intelligence. I am thrilled by the perspective introduced in the article, that twitter and similar tools allow us collectively to emulate the function of a brain, through synapses and neurons. A meta brain.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." is a famous quote by Thomas Watson, former Chairman Of IBM in 1943. We have seen Watson proved wrong, as the world is increasingly populated by more and more computers. The interesting development is that the computers are soon all to be connected over the net. They interact more and more, and the functionality is increasingly network based. What used to be many discrete computers are increasingly working together as one big machine, however decentralised and distributed. With the next generation social network tools we will be able to work together symbiotically with the big machine to form one giant meta brain, with immense capabilities for aggregate thoughts. In this perspective it also becomes clear that we have only started to explore the potential of collective human computer interaction, and the future of learning and science.
The use of the big machine and the meta brain obviously lies far beyond our formal democratic processes. The question arises, how can we use this to mobilize for, and to build a better society of tomorrow also in the formal sense?