My interest in the recent work of Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto (property assets) and participation in the grid computing SETI project (processing power) at NASA brought together a common theme: turning latent resources into formal or performing resources creates value. This led me to wonder why the same concept could not be applied to realize a greater proportion of our collective potential in the form of individual contributions to collective networked intelligence. This path led me to Pierre Levy, Chair of Collective Intelligence at the University of Ottawa, but I will post more formally on that later in this blog. For now the only part of this concept that I can firmly grasp is that we need to promote our individual abilities to contribute to the collective. All of us can relate to a feeling of unfufiled potential, frustrated ambition, and of dreams, realized and otherwise.
As a young naturalist traveling the world Charles Darwin wrote in his journal: If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin (Darwin, 1909). This thought resonates today as the networked economy becomes a modern pervasive global institution and vigorous efforts should be directed to examining how efforts can contribute to developing this still public, but increasingly privatized institution. Darwin would approve of addressing critical issues so early in an evolution. His observation could be made of the networked economy: if it provides opportunities for individuals, families and communities to improve their lives but we ignore opportunities to promote application in this regard, great is our sin.
What if the World Wide Web was all about that?
Labels: collective_intelligence, internet
