Geoff Mulgan - 23.09.2011
I gave a talk a couple of weeks ago at the Paradiso Conference in Brussels on the subject of collective intelligence. It's a topic that's going to be an important one for NESTA over the next year or two (we'll soon be publishing an overview paper on concepts, theories and uses of CI).
The event I took part in was about how collaborative platforms can contribute to solving social problems, such as cutting carbon emissions or obesity. It had a fascinating mix of speakers from Luc Jacquet (director of March of the Penguins) to Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom.
At the conference I spoke about NESTA projects such as Who owns my Neighbourhood? and some of the lessons learned from now famous sites like Intellipedia, Buzzcar, Ushahidi and CouchSurfing. The big challenge is to move these platforms from aggregation and sensing to more complex tasks, like judgement and wisdom. Just as important is the challenge of ensuring that very open sites don't accelerate the circulation of misinformation. The wisdom of crowds is a nice idea, but it's not very accurate. I knew the academic critiques but I was even more impressed by reading Jaron Lanier's remarkable book You are not a gadget, in which the creator of virtual reality gives us a powerful reality check on where the web may be going wrong.
I'm not quite sure how it fits but one of strangest things I saw at the event was a site called RateMyNetworkDiagram.com, where people post diagrams of their home networks and rate each others' - an odd use of time and energy.
The event was followed by a sad lunch in Brussels to remember Diogo Vasconcelos. Diogo had a meteoric career as entrepreneur, publisher, minister and social entrepreneur, latterly under the umbrella of Cisco. From Lebanon and Palestine to Poland or Portugal he was brilliant at linking things up and making things happen. Over the last few years I worked very closely with him, and we often appeared as a double act, thinking the same thoughts and finishing each others' sentences. The fact that many parts of the European Commission have taken up the challenge of social innovation is largely his achievement.
His sudden death in July has left a great hole; an extraordinary number of people in many countries have been touched by his inspiration and generosity. At the lunch we discussed how to build on his legacy. His father, who had a background in trains, gave us our metaphor: to remember him we needed not a statue or a memorial but a vehicle in motion. The combination of several of the organisations he helped establish (such as Dialogue Cafe and SIX) and a likely new prize for social innovators across Europe hopefully mean that his influence will continue for many years to come.
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garrilla
23 Sep 11, 10:41am (1 years ago)
By the way
I just wanted to add: there is a direct translation between Arnheim's Model of Participation and a continuum of collective intelligence of the web2.0 which starts with a broadcast model in which there is nil participation and nil CI up to the truly co-owened collaboration of the wiki, which is all about flexible participation and total CI.
23 Sep 11, 10:34am (1 years ago)
social mobilisation
very interesting Geoff, as ever. We have been looking at this for a new start-up that we are in the final phase of launching, you'll eventually find us at http://www.so-mo.co and can follow us at @so_mo_co on twitter for now. We want to network citizen/service users together with other stakeholders, funders, commissioners, deliverers etc to deploy their collective intelligence in co-producing solutions for social delivery; mobilising the right people and resources from a position of strength that intelligence can bring. We believe this approach could be important element in the plurality of innovations that will be essential in nurturing the new era of 'public service' over the coming decade and more. Largely its a set of activities that already happen: public/citizen engagement; participatory delivery; digital tech & social networking; and social impact measurement. While social mobilisation is mainly a process of convergence, the impact from drawing these activities together will be better service experience. Collective intelligence is about the creation of shared value, and this common ownership of the problem and the solution has been a big challenge in public services for a long time. Using the social graph imaginatively can leverage significant knowledge spillover and extend the emotional content of the response. And the virtualisation of part of the process will gain from having a more agile and flexible response. Ultimately, social mobilisation, by deploying collective intelligence, will create better and more effective services and should have a big impact on both ROI and SROI. @_garrilla
williamperrin
23 Sep 11, 9:54am (1 years ago)
100 million comments a year
It's good to draw a distinction between collective intelligence and collective information. The British public is mildly addicted to sharing information, making over 100 million comments a year in consumer forums providing feedback on service experience (Consumer Focus figures). Often this results in collective intelligence. Some companies are starting to get the hang of this, but the public sector and institutions are some way behind. the third sector institutions are especially weak. I wrote on this rounding up a range of forums. http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/mutualsupportforums/ The most fascinating example of creating shared intelligence is the forum at rightsnet where benefits advisors help each other navigate the complexities of the benefits system. It's well worth watching Fix My Transport as it tries to create shared intelligence in sorting out transport system problems.