MIT is an amazing place to be. Check out this new research center.
The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence starts off with the following research question:
How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?
They have a really toight website that discusses some of the context for this center:
“Collective intelligence has existed for at least as long as humans have. Tribes of hunter-gatherers, nations, and modern corporations all act collectively with varying degrees of intelligence. But this ancient phenomenon is now occurring in dramatically new forms.”
One possible new form, from a research goal to cure cancer:
“Imagine a complex organism–a worldwide network of many humans and computers–that uses a variety of raw data about individual patients, clinical practices, and basic medical research to make predictions and recommendations for individual patients. And imagine, further, that these predictions and recommendations get better and better over time as the system is used. We propose to do some of the essential research needed to help create such a system.”
They hope to observe and report some of things we are already doing, and also sponsor some of their own. Take a look at their pubs section including the titles “The Future of Work”, “Democratizing Innovation”, and “Inventing the Organizations of the 21 Century”. Some projects that they are working on, including a wiki titled the Handbook for Collective Intelligence.
Finally, the video of their launch, I love when the tweeds get going on this stuff. More fodder for the non-believers and bringing respectability to the movement.
Oh how I love everything MIT does. What a beautiful thought, having a base of both computers and people connected at all times to generate and expand on ideas within the project.
I’ll be following this one closely. Thanks for the heads up.