Announcing a CI conference at MIT, April 18-20, 2012

George Pór — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 10:50:32 +0000

The conference description is presented here.

Presentations

Visualizing collective discursive user interactions in online life science communities

Dhiraj Murthy, Alexander Gross, and Stephanie Bond

Group foraging in dynamic environments

Michael E. Roberts, Sam Cheesman, and Patrick McMullen

Markerless motion capture in the crowd

Ian Spiro, Thomas Huston, and Christoph Bregler

Tracking the 2011 student-led movement in chile through social media use

M. Barahona, C. García, P. Gloor, and P. Parraguez

Effects of social influence on the wisdom of crowds

Pavlin Mavrodiev, Claudio J. Tessone, and Frank Schweitzer

Learning to predict the wisdom of crowds

Seyda Ertekin, Haym Hirsh, and Cynthia Rudin

What “crowdsourcing” obscures: exposing the dynamics of connected crowd work during disaster

Kate Starbird

Collaborative development in Wikipedia

Gerald C. Kane and Sam Ransbotham

Crowdsourcing Gaze Data Collection

Dmitry Rudoy, Dan B Goldman, Eli Shechtman, and Lihi Zelnik-Manor

Analytic methods for optimizing realtime crowdsourcing

Michael Bernstein, David R. Karger, Robert C. Miller, and Joel R. Brandt

Crowd & Prejudice

Nicolas Della Penna and Mark D. Reid

Re-differentiation as collective intelligence: the ktunaxa language online community

Christopher Horsethief

When majority voting fails: comparing quality assurance methods for noisy human computation environment

Yu-An Sun and Christopher Dance

An existing, ecologically-successful genus of collectively intelligent artificial creatures

Benjamin Kuipers

Toward a comparative cognitive history: Archimedes and D. H. J. Polymath

Lav R. Varshney

Collective intelligence in humans: a literature review

Juho Salminen

Thermodynamic principles in social collaborations

Huan-Kai Peng, Ying Zhang, Peter Pirolli, and Tad Hogg

Crowdsourcing collective emotional intelligence

Rob Morris and Rosalind Picard

Posters

Social aspects of virtual teams

Daphna Shwarts-Asher

The Wikipedian revolution: collective intelligence in the Egyptian Blogosphere

Gloria Mark, Justin Chung, Ban Al-Ani, and Jennifer Jones

Collective creativity: Where we are and where we might go

Lixiu Yu, Jeffrey V. Nickerson, and Yasuaki Sakamoto

Crowd Memory: Learning in the collective

Walter S. Lasecki, Samuel White, Kyle I. Murray, and Jeffrey P. Bigham

Patterns of social influence in networks of situated cognitive agents

Russell C. Thomas and John S. Gero

Who is authoritative? Understanding reputation mechanisms in Quora

Sharoda A. Paul, Lichan Hong, and Ed. H. Chi

Leading the collective: Social capital and the development of leaders in core-peripery organizations

Benjamin Collier and Robert Kraut

Macroscopes: models for collective decision making

Subramanian Ramamoorthy, András Z. Salamon, and Rahul Santhanam

Collective cognitive authority: expertise location via social labeling

Terrell G. Russell

Motivations for participation in socially networked collective intelligence systems

Jon Chamberlain

A Computational Analysis of Collective Discourse

Vahed Qazvinian and Dragomir R. Radev

GalaxySearch – Discovering the Knowledge of Many by Using Wikipedia as a Meta-Searchindex

Hauke Fuehres, Peter A. Gloor, Michael Henninger, Reto Kleeb, and Keiichi Nemoto

Broadcast search in Innovation Contests: Case for Hybrid Models

Thomas Gegenhuber

The effects of prediction market design and price elasticity on trading performance of users: an experimental analysis

Ivo Blohm, Christoph Riedl, Johann Füller, Orhan Köroglu, Jan MarcoLeimeister, and Helmut Krcmar

Rationale awareness for quality assurance in iterative human computation processes

Lu Xiao

Automatic Prediction of Small Group Performance in Information Sharing Tasks

Wen Dong, Bruno Lepri, and Alex (Sandy) Pentland

Spontaneous combustion

George Pór — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:08:08 +0000

Breakthrough emergence to a new form of civilization at a higher level of harmonized complexity is like spontaneous combustion.

The more transformational movements get exposed to and enter into functional alignment with each other, the closer is the tipping point.

“Combustion begins if a sufficiently strong oxidizer, such as oxygen, is present.” (Wikipedia) The oxidizer of social emergence is a collective sensing and meaning making organ of the movements of transformation.

That’s why I am collaborating on the development of The Future of Occupy website and newsletter.

On the way to conscious humanity: the infinite game of regional metamorphosis

George Pór — Sat, 07 May 2011 09:21:21 +0000

Long-time readers of my blog may remember a post about the collective intelligence of imaginal cells, which was about how emergence is using certain cells in the caterpillar-turned-into-plasma for giving rise to the butterfly, and what that may mean for the evolutionary agents of social transformation. Now the “imaginal cells” metaphor itself transformed into “imaginal souls,” the main actors of an infinite game taking off in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area, the birth place of so many cultural, technical, and social innovation. It is a brainchild of Bill Veltrop, a veteran of the organizational transformation movement, and social visionary extraordinaire. The essence of his new initiative, in his own words, is:

Current State — Isolated “Imaginal Souls”
There are thousands of commitment-ready infinite players (Distinctionary) on this planet. They are scattered throughout all sectors and geographies. For the most part they feel isolated and constrained. All have experience with “immune systems.”

Interim State — Connecting the Dots
Our strategy is simple: Using the Bay Area as our practice field, we find ways to “clump and cluster” in the service of spawning and supporting generative initiatives of all kinds in all sectors. As we weave a web of relationships among diverse allies we begin to realize, for the first time, that we are “something different from a caterpillar.”

Future State — “Houston, We Have Metamorphosis” Collectively, we begin spawning generative initiatives that are much more like butterflies than caterpillars. These initiatives “infect” our traditional institutions in ways that facilitate their natural evolution into forms that are dramatically more rewarding to all their stakeholders. Once we collectively begin to experience what’s possible in the Age of Conscious Evolution, it will become irreversible. Reverting to today’s traditional organizing forms will become as improbable as vacuum tubes making a comeback and displacing transistors.

What prompted my writing about Bill’s work, this morning, is the latest inspiring initiative of the Monterey Institute for Social Innovation (of which he is a co-founder), supported by the Silicon Valley Innovation Institute. At the April 6 SVII gathering Bill introduced “Regional Metamorphosis as a pragmatic strategy for accelerating our movement into an Age of Conscious Evolution.” There’s a video that captures the spirit of that evening and a shorter, edited-down version of it. They are the work of Jesse Clark and his colleagues.

The aim of the initiative’s first phase is to find qualified players ready to play the infinite game of Regional Metamorphosis. Here are the personal characteristics of those who qualify:

You love to pioneer, push the envelope, explore outside your box, experiment with new ways of seeing and being. You are an “Innovator” or “Early Adopter.” You’re an avid learner and attracted by those who share your commitment to growth and development.
You are undaunted by the challenges of high-altitude, big picture visioning, deep inner exploration, and acting with boldness and immediacy.
You are successful in your work and your role as a leader. You’re intrigued with the notion that your success might be limiting what you believe to be possible, e.g., you sense a higher destiny lying beyond your current horizons.
You consider personal inner work of primary significance to effective action as a leader, and want to spend time with those who share this commitment.
You’re on a path—your journey “has you.” You’re convinced there’s a larger process at work, and you want to learn how best to flow with that process.
You are intrigued by the notion of committing to a 10-100X shift in the lasting difference you make in the world.
You see strengthening the quality of relationships and agreements as increasingly important in all aspects of your life.
You are ready to do what it takes to bring balance and wholeness into your life—to embrace both your humanity and your sense of deep interconnectedness, to bring intention and attention into your emergence process.
You’re ready to participate in a developmental adventure designed to support your journey “from where you are . . . to who you are.“
You have a deep sense that you are not in this alone—that we’re all in this together. You are ready to evolve that special web of co-creative relationships that will support you in this next phase of our human journey.

If you feel you re a game-ready infinite players and want to get involved with the nascent “regional metamorphosis” movement get in touch with Bill Veltrop. If you happen to live in the San Francisco Bay Area or Silicon Valley, don’t miss their next meeting on May 10.

If you want to find out about some possible aspects of the relationship relationship between regional and planetary transformation, look up the corresponding category in this blog. For fans of collective intelligence, regional transformation is the next frontier. We know a lot about the emergence of collective intelligence in small groups and also, lots of theories on global-scale CI. Where the rubber hits the road, where actionable CI can reach the greatest results and multi-yield return on our investment of attention and energy, is the region. That’s why I call all CI fans to follow what is happening in the regional metamorphosis movement and support it in all imaginable ways.

Disclosure: Bill Veltrop has been one of the two most influential mentors of mine for the last 20 years. The other is Doug Engelbart, who inspired me to get on the journey of collective intelligence research. Bringing the insights from that journey to the infinite game of regional metamorphosis will be my small way to give thanks to both Doug and Bill.

a measure and a condition for the metabeing to truly become intelligent

George Pór — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:55:37 +0000

Venessa Miemis wrote:

> all semantically linked, so for example, it could be built so that it showed all organizations, and then listed specific projects they are working on or in support of or things they are associated with.

> providing a snapshot overview of the entire ecosystem, and making it very easy for projects and people to become aware of one another and share data instead of duplicating it over and over.

In a similar vein, I wrote about some steps towards crowdsourcing the mapping of the movements & tribes that model the social practices of a positive future here.

The particular possibility that has been attracting my attention the most is to increase the self-awareness of all fields of transformation and to create/cultivate an emergent platform that can act as a rocket booster for our collective intelligence and wisdom.

> The thing i’m envisioning would be a lot of work to set up, but then it would be intelligent… if these values were defined, they could then be entered into this database, and it would show you the 9 projects that were related/similar/identical.

The thing that Venessa is envisioning is the thing that any self-organizing global-scale collective intelligence need if it is to be holoptical.

> If there was more granular information about all of this, and it was openly available and easy to navigate, we’d have a much more effective method of allocating resources to efforts that will go furthest.

Envisioning and prototyping “more effective method of allocating resources to efforts that will go furthest” is both a measure and a condition for the metabeing to truly become intelligent. Nothing less will keep us from becoming an aborted evolutionary experience.

If so, then need to shift, sooner or later our scaffolding environment from The Next Net Google Group to, at least, a Drupal-like content management system/framework. The sooner would be better because the conversation is already richer than what this tool can do justice to.

Howard Rheingold interviews Pierre Lévy on collective intelligence

George Pór — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 03:18:13 +0000

Mapping the Complexity of Climate Change and Sustainability

George Pór — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 21:21:30 +0000

“Mapping the Complexity of Climate Change and Sustainability” is the title of a conversation in the Sustainability group at the Presencing Community site, which Toni Stafford, a wise, whole-brain woman opened on March 5. By “whole brain” I mean someone who is at home with matters of Spirit, beauty, deep intuition, AND doesn’t shy away from the scientific dimensions of what evolutionary agents need to master, such as chaos and complexity theory in action, systems dynamics, holarchy, etc.

Toni developed a systems dynamics model that reflects her understanding the multiple perspectives on climate change and how to balance the needs of environment, economy, and society. She added:

“Creation of these diagrams MUST be collaborative and iterative. No one person can comprehend and map all the complexity herself. That means I’m aware that it is incomplete and even deeply flawed.”

Toni posted her model both in the format of the Vensim systems dynamics software, for those of us who want to interact with the model and in PowerPoint for those who want only to see it. I attach here ToniStafford’s sysdynamics view of climate change, March 5, 2010 .ppt , hoping that some of the world-citizens will decide to dive into the model sooner or later, on our collaborative learning journey. To change it to readable size, after downloading it, select 200%.

Toni says: If you are unaccustomed to reading these models, look for the big bold blue words “I am exposed to climate change data” in the center of the cluster of loops on the left. This is where you will begin to read the story. Follow the arrows around and read the words in order that you encounter them. When the words have multiple arrows leading away from them, think of that as a “choose your own adventure story”. Pick a thread and follow it around and then go back and follow any of the thread you’ve missed.

If you want to go deeper in studying and improving her model, I recommend to download its Vensim version from her post, for which you’d also have to download the Vensim’s model reader and Personal Learning Edition.

If after all this, you feel inspired to work with Toni on the collaborative development of the systems dynamics model of the complexity of climate change and sustainability, please join her in the conversation in the Presencing community.

Building the Arks

George Pór — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 21:12:27 +0000

I feel this is a “building the Arks” time on Earth, vehicles built by our collective intelligence, competence, and wisdom, which should not leak while sailing to the other shore on the stormy waters of complexity and singularity waves.

Where will their strength come from? From the strength of our caring for the Whole; the life-affirming principles of our working together; and the joy we experience in doing so.

and the Noah story, on a lighthearted tone: …

Meaning flows more smoothly if we compact before we ship

George Pór — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:17:08 +0000

There was a skype call between @ffunch, @sebpaquet and @technoshaman on July 9, 2010.

Below is a small pattern offered as a self-running demonstration of its content, inspired by our rich conversation.

Can you think of any additional heading for the meta-data that would make this pattern more useful to you?

If yes, pls reply.

Key thought:

New experiences & meaning from inspired conversations flow more smoothly in and across nodes of innovation, if we pay attention to how we can help it.

Relevant excerpts:

@ffunch: I accept your suggestion that we reflect and polish and send something out; it’s not just a matter of summarizing it, but there are also some other dimensions. We need to make a pretty compact form; a 1.5h recording is not compact. We need to distil the core of it and pass that on.
@technoshaman: Groups of conscious people have a responsibility of bringing out as much coherence as possible outside of their group.

@ffunch: What I heard you saying is that we have a responsibility to package insights. It’s not a great service necessarily to share a long conversation or a long set of notes.

Reviewer note:

Listening to the record of the conversation, @cyber_shaman commented:

Distillation of information, creation of new languages, passing on coherent meta-messages

To adequately convey something to the future it needs to be in a compact form.

Attention to consciousness of common process ie converging/diverging

Rendering effective processes into pattern language

Observing responsibility to bring coherent information, distilled and synthesised, to the whole in accessible and appropriate ways

CI, AI, UI or just I?

George Pór — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:23:44 +0000

The term “Collective Intelligence” is sufficiently vague and positive that it is quite easy to agree that of course we want it. We want to be smarter together.

But we might imply quite different subtexts when we talk with each other about it, and we might make different assumptions. It is probably a good idea to be aware of those differences.

Some would group CI with AI. That would imply that it is constructed, or that mechanisms are constructed that will evolve into the AI, like neural nets or cellular automata. And at some point the AI will become self-aware and we can talk with it. And further down the line it becomes smarter than us, and it might decide to no longer bother to talk with us.

I personally am skeptical of Artificial Intelligence. I’m even more skeptical of the idea of brains as the seat of consciousness. I think it is a little naive to expect that if one constructs a network with a sufficient number of inter-connected nodes, modeled superficially on the cells we see in brains, then, suddenly – a miracle happens – and it becomes self-aware. Oh, there’s probably plenty of still undiscovered magic in inter-connected networks of nodes and cellular automata, etc., and we don’t really know yet what will be most significant, so we should explore all if it. I’m just saying that it isn’t a good idea to bet everything on that one sketchy theory.

Another possibility is what we’re harnessing something that already is there. The universe is very intelligently constructed, in ways we can’t approximate by many orders of magnitude, even if we can do some clever things of our own. Just think of evolution. Here’s a process that has continued without fail for billions of years, continuously developing better and better life forms. A fantastic variety of life forms, all representing clever solutions to many, many problems. Some life forms, like us, even can think abstractly and creatively, and seem to have to opportunity to continue and expand evolution consciously, at a higher order. All set in motion by autonomous processes started many billions of years ago. Mind-blowing. It is entirely possible that the whole thing, the universe, or multiverse, already is one giant immortal quantum entangled 11 dimensional Universal Intelligence. In which case we’d maybe want to tap into that, instead of trying to re-invent the wheel.

A more down-to-earth way of looking at it is that CI is simply us. How well we work together, and how coherent the result is. If we work together in ways that maximize synergy, where things fit well together, and we accomplish more together than apart, then CI is high.

I believe that by its very nature, an increase of CI can only be a good thing. Because it is collective. It is us operating at a higher level. As contrasted with the AI scenario, where something alien wakes up and it might or might not be friendly, might or might not like us. A positive level of CI is by its nature friendly to us. A negative level of CI is destructive and maybe suicidal. But, as it is at all times us, it is never really against us. It couldn’t ever decide to continue without us.

It might well be a red herring to pursue a personification for CIs or AIs. You know, the Turing test, where we’d expect a new kind of intelligence to be able to have a conversation indistinguishable from one with a human. It is a bit like the logical mistake often made by religious prophets. Like how Christians cast their God in their own image. Some old man with a grey beard. It might be just as ridiculous to expect a higher order intelligence to be a person, with whom you have idle smalltalk. We don’t need another person, we already have plenty of those, we need higher order intelligence.

The kind of higher order intelligence we most need isn’t particularly the self-aware kind. Rather, we need a coherent noosphere to operate in. Simply an environment where the information we need is likely to be easily available to us. Like how you’ve all noticed that Google makes you seem much smarter. You can find information much faster. You seem more intelligent. But we need something several orders of magnitude more flexible and organized. Where it is very easy to know what you need or want to know, very easy to find the people you need or want to work with, and where the decreased resistance and increased efficiency makes bigger things appear to come together effortlessly and “by themselves”. That doesn’t so much require an AI God who stays up all night figuring things out for us, as it requires an instant friction-less access to huge amounts of reliable information.

We need systems that make us more intelligent. I.e. that increase our collective ability to solve problems, to plan, to learn, to understand complexity. That might have more to do with understanding intelligence than with constructing an intelligence, or waiting for one to appear.

on hypertrails between vistas, which we create by walking on them

George Pór — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:08:06 +0000

Good tools always have unintended uses stumbled upon by its individual and collective users. Hopefully, that will be the case of élan map, too. I can hardly wait for its alpha version to manifest so that we can start playing with it and discover its potential beyond what it was originally conceived.

A possibility that I am particularly interested in and want to explore further as the components of our mapping tool gain higher resolution is this:

What if we convened an expert panel of thinkers and doers in selected disciplines, and let them loose in a treasure hunting exercise using our interactive map of social and thought movements on the edge?

The question that we would ask could include something like this: Looking back from the middle of the 21st century, which of the movements mapped by élan would be considered as having had a significant impact on the transition to our new planetary reality?

Then we could compare the data coming from a modified Delphi survey of our panel with the data from the hypertrails connecting the vistas in the landscape of transformational memes and movements.

Hypertrails are those affinity passages between the vistas, the salient points (or strange attractors) in the landscape, which will emerge from our very walking those trails. Just as students cut new paths on campus lawn by going for shorter connection between buildings they visit more frequently…

What if we had a chance to distort the timeline by using information from the Delphi’s “visit from the future”?