Here is a really interesting bite into the Wisdom of Crowds ideas and the balance between the individual role and the network (collective). The article and related discussion from the mediasweathearts are really interesting.
The reason the collective can be valuable is precisely that its peaks of intelligence and stupidity are not the same as the ones usually displayed by individuals. Both kinds of intelligence are essential.What makes a market work, for instance, is the marriage of collective and individual intelligence. A marketplace can't exist only on the basis of having prices determined by competition. It also needs entrepreneurs to come up with the products that are competing in the first place.
In other words, clever individuals, the heroes of the marketplace, ask the questions which are answered by collective behavior. They put the jellybeans in the jar.
There are certain types of answers that ought not be provided by an individual. When a government bureaucrat sets a price, for instance, the result is often inferior to the answer that would come from a reasonably informed collective that is reasonably free of manipulation or runaway internal resonances. But when a collective designs a product, you get design by committee, which is a derogatory expression for a reason.
The interesting balance maybe that in an advocacy context the failures and successes of networks and organizations are different. IT is also really good to recognize the network will have peaks and failures BUT they are different peaks and failures than one might get from an organization based campaigns. The connection and balance between the two modes and the interaction of the two in social change and campaigns is the pay off point for network-centric advocacy.
What are the peaks and failures of organization based approaches to organizing political power? What are the the network peaks and failures? How can we mash them together?
". The collective is good at solving problems which demand results that can be evaluated by uncontroversial performance parameters, but bad when taste and judgment matter."
Yes.. network-centric campaigns may be bad at taste and judgement (a constant criticism of blogger political moves) but they are awesome at performance parameters...money raised, exposures, people contacted, etc.
There are a few places I would like to kick this around with Jaron Lanier like the concepts of the hive "heart" is it a hive that was started and run by a leader or did the hive create the leader?
Is the constant experimentation with "bad taste" actually reflect a collective part of the process of creating "winners"?
My biggest challenge is with the statement "Empowering the collective does not empower individuals — just the reverse is true." It is a powerful closing to the essay but it is not a logical close that hangs well with the essay up to that point.
It is also just as accurate to say "Empowering the individual creates the collective." It was the complete lack of engagement that creates the power imbalance. The lack of engagement exaggerates control.
If you give most people the freedom to do anything they will for the most part conform. It is not a diabolic scheme or technical failure. It is the DNA of our messed up social species. It is the same dynamic that pushes billions of dollars in aid to Tsunami relief as fuels the insanity in Rwanda. Mobs are not tools they are organic reflections of the components of that constitute their mass. They can be good or bad. They have been a part of our survival toolbox since we were roaming the forests as apes.
The challenge now is letting more of the individuals develop the controls for the new tempo and scale that connectivity provides (not just techies and hackers).
As a lot of individuals we will need to connect and scale our organizing to push back on threats posed by a new range of mass threats ranging from multinational exploitation to epidemics and global threats. The new tools are the markets' responses to new needs created by the industrial age. these new threats are only going to be solved by more collective engagement from larger and more diverse networks.
It is a really sharp essay. I often wish I had more time to sit and kick around all the theory and pull it into the social change and advocacy campaigns I support. these folks are laying it down without any context tailored for campaign planners.
