What Is My Collective IQ? – Boosting CI from Within

Posted on October 28, 2004 by George Pór

In the last couple of months I’ve been swamped by work aimed at raising the collective intelligence of three global professional networks. It kept me busy and away from blog-writing but it also provided snippets of new experience that will certainly flow into the blog. I’m not yet emerging from that work but have just come across, in the CI folder of my hard disk, the “What Is My Collective IQ? CI Starts Within!” paper that I presented first at International Colloquium at the University of Ottawa, June 24, 2003. Whilst you’re waiting for some fresh materials, I thought that some of my newer thoughts triggered by that paper could lead to an interesting, collaborative inquiry. Let me know whether you agree.

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Posted in CI Within | 11 Comments

Gaian democracies and CI

Posted on August 19, 2004 by George Pór

I received this link from a friend: http://www.wwdemocracy.nildram.co.uk/gaian_democracies/web_of_democracy.htm.
I went there, read it and also another page at that site: the intro chapter of GAIAN DEMOCRACIES: Redefining Globalisation and People-Power by Roy Madron & John Jopling. Brilliant!! They are convincingly talking about addressing “wicked” problems with soft-systems approaches.
I believe the Gaian democracy field represents one of the most powerful context for which we can grow collective intelligence and wisdom. Liberating the full power of intelligence and wisdom that resides in human communities will be needed to break through the web of ‘wicked’ problems and reach Gaian democracy. As the authors say, The soft-systems approach to ‘wicked’ problems arising in complex human systems requires the people involved in the problem situation to be actively involved in a constant cycle of thinking, acting and learning together.
The best frameworks, tools, and practices developed by leading thinkers and communities in the domains of collective intelligence and wisdom need to be brought in action if we are to make those “constant cycle of thinking, acting and learning together” truly triple-E: effective, efficient, and enjoyable. Deeply interweaving the CI/CW fields with Gaian democracy work would accelerate the evolution of both. I look forward to it with joyful anticipation!

Posted in Politics and CI | 5 Comments

Defining “Collective Intelligence”

Posted on August 9, 2004 by George Pór

“Collective intelligence” is a richly diverse domain of study and practice. Having an inclusive definition may help more diverse practitioners work and explore together. (see George Por’s entry re CI definition) One such definition might be simply:
   Collective intelligence is the INTELLIGENCE of a COLLECTIVE,
      which arises from one or more SOURCES.
Below I expand on each of the highlighted terms in the definition to paint an inclusive picture of the whole domain. (Another application of this definition: We can compare diverse perspectives on CI by clarifying the unique meanings that advocates of those perspectives assign to each of those three highlighted terms.)
COLLECTIVE
“Collective” refers to any entity constituted by other entities. In this case, it usually refers to human social entities such as groups, organizations and communities. But it can also refer to animal collectives such as flocking birds or nesting ants, or to groups of virtual artificially intelligent agents in computer environments or to even broader entities.
INTELLIGENCE AS A CAPACITY
Intelligence is variously defined as “the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge,” “the ability to effectively adapt,” or simply “the ability to solve problems.” But for our purposes it may be useful to list characteristics, capacities or functions that are variously ascribed to intelligence — problem solving, learning, adaptation, reasoning, prediction, reflection, imagination, etc. — and then welcome into our domain anyone who is exploring the collective expression of any of these.
INTELLIGENCE AS STRATEGIC INFORMATION
Intelligence can also be defined as strategically useful information such as the kind of intelligence that intelligence agencies generate for decison-makers in government and the military.
SOURCES OF COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
Practitioners differ on where collective intelligence (as a capacity) comes from and where it resides. Making these differences explicit may reveal useful overlaps and complementarities, as well as facilitating mutual understanding. Some of these different perspectives include
* Collective intelligence belongs to or is a property of a whole in which individuals are embedded or of which they are an expression, which existed prior to them.
* Collective intelligence is a background field of intelligence co-generated by the minds that make it up.
* Collective intelligence is an emergent property of collective social systems.
* Collective intelligence is a group phenomena (often experienced as “group magic”) in which the intelligences of individual participants who are in tune with each other merge into a group intelligence through which meaning and action flow smoothly.
* Collective intelligence is cognitive synergy among appropriately diverse perspectives in conversation such that new insights or more inclusive pictures of reality emerge.
* Collective intelligence is a phenomenon associated with distributed individual intelligences who have access to their collective output and thought processes through their co-generative participation.
* Collective intelligence is a natural product of the independent opinions or behaviors of diverse individuals or groups in a decentralized system (flock, market, guessing game) that aggregates those opinions or behaviors.
ONLINE DEFINITIONS OF COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
There are many definitions of collective intelligence available online. I’ve listed seventeen, all of which can be seen as specific expressions of the above broad definition.
[All the points above are expanded in the full document which follows…]
.

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Posted in Definitions | 12 Comments

Cross-fertilizing CI and civic intelligence

Posted on August 8, 2004 by George Pór

I know it’s a short notice but I’ve received the news only last night. The opportunity it represents for the cross-fertilization of the “collective intelligence” and the “civic intelligence” phenomena is just too important to not try to alert you all about it.
According to Doug Schuler, one of the thought leaders of civic intelligence, “Society often develops intelligent responses to collective problems often through citizen activism. At the same time, our innumerable problems may be outpacing our ability to address them and the ideas, tactics and technologies that we need may not be adequate… Civic intelligence goes beyond the individual and focuses on the collective and distributed nature of intelligence.” excerpt from Civic Intelligence pattern
It seems that the civic intelligence initiatives, such as A Pattern Language Project, could benefit from the significant work that has been done on the field of collective intelligence, and vice versa.
Here’s an opportunity to engage the dialogue. The Journal of Human Centred Systems will have a special issue on Exploring Civic Intelligence: Descriptions & Prescriptions. Due date for submission of extended abstracts (1000 words) is August 13, 2004. Details of the Call for Papers are here. If some of you reading this blog are also interested in CI applied to civic matters, then this maybe the perfect opportunity to collaborate on a paper that can feed and cross-polinate those fields.

Posted in Collective Objectivity, Politics and CI | 1 Comment

What is CI? – a community approach to define it

Posted on August 4, 2004 by George Pór

In a recent conference call of CI practitioners somebody brought up the question “what collective intelligence really IS”. Here, I suggest an approach to define CI in terms of a domain of practice shared by a community of peers.

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Posted in CI & Communities of Practice, Definitions | 4 Comments

Emerging and converging fields involving collective intelligence.

Posted on July 29, 2004 by George Pór

The following fields of study and practice have an emergent, leading edge quality to them and, at the same time, seem to be overlapping more and more, and even converging into an increasingly coherent understanding of the intelligence of whole systems, and of Life as a whole. Increasingly, these fields are using methodologies, language, metaphors and narratives from each other to support and describe what seem to be manifestations of the same patterns in different realms and at different levels.
We can further the evolution of our culture(s) towards becoming a global wisdom society by supporting these diverse fields to discover each other, talk together and collaborate.
I suspect this list is not complete. I hope others will add new fields or emergent factors that they see as part of this convergence toward greater collective intelligence. But these are the ones that come to my mind at this point:

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Posted in CI Basics | 4 Comments

Seminar on CI at the U. of Ottawa

Posted on July 19, 2004 by George Pór

Fourth international seminar on Collective Intelligence at the University of Ottawa
8, 9, 10th of August, 2004
THEME:
Collective intelligence is a very broad field, with many research programs. The Ottawa seminar is concerned with the research program developed at the CI Lab of the University of Ottawa. The participants of the seminar will discuss the projection of digital information into a 3D virtual world mirroring CI processes thanks to the Digitong semantic coordinate system.
See DRAFT PROGRAM below.

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Posted in Academic Research in CI, Technologies That Support CI | 2 Comments

What is social about “social tools”?

Posted on July 10, 2004 by George Pór

Marc Eisenstadt, a fellow speaker at London Symposium on Social Tools for the Enterprise, wrote in the Symposium’s blog:
Personal ownership of content creation is critical: in our work with school children, parents, members of the local community, University students, corporate sponsors, and research colleagues, we find over and over again that empowering users to create their own content is the key to fostering engagement, creativity, and problem solving skills. (emphasis added)
Building on that, I’d add the technological innovation of weblogs will discover its full power in the enterprise when associated with the social innovation of communities of practice. Why? When we free the creative potential of flexible constellations of communities of interest and practice, it will boost their members’ identity, mutual care and professional pride. The emerging generation of social tools can be optimized for powering up that process. When that happens, blogs graduate from personal publishing tool and become a potent enabler of collective intelligence.
Right now, in many companies blogging is looked at with the same suspicion as personal webpages were in the early days of intranets. “Yet, another tool that people can use to express themselves but doesn’t it risk to get out of control?” Well, who is in control, anyway?

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Posted in CI & Communities of Practice | 9 Comments

Thoughts on Wisdom and Collective Intelligence

Posted on July 5, 2004 by George Pór

This post was written by Tom Atlee and published originally in the previous incarnation of this blog.

One of the most intriguing aspects of collective intelligence is its relative independence from individual intelligence. It is clear to most students of the field that a group of intelligent people will not necessarily manifest group intelligence. Nor will a coalition of intelligent groups necessarily add up to an intelligent coalition. Nor will making all organizations intelligent, by itself, produce a collectively intelligent society. The intelligence of the parts/individuals varies independently with the intelligence of the whole/collective.

Usually the difference is described in terms of cooperation. If the individuals cooperate, they can generate collective intelligence. Often the importance of collective resources or structures, like various forms of group memory (databases), are noted. These, and other analyses, are quite valid.

I sense something underlying them all, though. That is the presence of “the whole” in the life and functioning of “the parts.” For example:

  • If workers in an organization share a common vision and/or an understanding of the functioning of the entire organization, they tend to self-organize in more collectively intelligent ways.
  • People who collaborate are doing so either because they believe in their shared work (the larger whole that embraces them all) or because there is a collaborative group ethic which lives in or among them strongly enough to structure their interactions.
  • In decision-making bodies, having diverse information from all stakeholders which paints a more complex big-picture reality than any member came in with, and/or having a process that can help them deal with their diverse perspectives creatively so that they “encounter more of the whole” creatively, facilitates the emergence of collective intelligence.
  • People who are collectively attuned to more inclusive, less fragmented realities — including Quakers and certain practitioners of ego-transcendence — tend to be able to more readily find high-quality common ground and shared energy, often in ways that feel more like the Whole is working THROUGH them or AS them.

For many years, I’ve felt that the essence of wisdom is wholeness. Wisdom, in all its forms, helps us deal creatively with more of the whole of life, of situations, of the people who sit across from us — engaging more of their complexity, nuance, aliveness and fullness. It recently occurred to me that wisdom may be a concept within which to collect all the different factors that enable individual intelligence to manifest as collective intelligence. If wisdom is present at the individual level, or in the environment where the individuals are relating to each other, then it tends to expand their individuality into the “higher” (collective) levels where all those individualities can then manifest collectively as positive, intelligently coherent functioning.

This may be too abstract to be useful to others, but I expect to be exploring it further for my own purposes in the future. For what it’s worth, here are some notes that summarize this thesis….

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Posted in CI Basics | 6 Comments

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, Polarization, and CI

Posted on July 3, 2004 by George Pór

I read in an email that I’ve just received from Tom Atlee:
(The quotes are authorized to publish.)
There is a lot of conversation about polarization, and a flurry of Op Ed pieces about it, from both the Left and the Right… that has been triggered by Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11. Polarization is one of the major obstacles to people coming together co-intelligently… But attacking an individual or group for polarizing the conversation can, by marginalizing them, undermine informed dialogue and collective intelligence. The kind of anti-polarization work that is needed, in contrast, is persistent, open exploration of the polarizing forces in and around all of us, and the polarizing activities of all sides.
If we want to enhance collective intelligence in our political process, the important thing is not to silence the polarizing partisans. The most important thing is to establish adequate forums where citizens can hear articulate advocates of opposing views; productively deliberate about their ideas, information and proposals; and creatively use those different perspectives to arrive at understandings and policies that serve them and their collective welfare.
To read the whole text of Tom’s astute observation and analysis of what is going on around Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, click here.
The political sphere is deeply divided by partisan interests everywhere but probably nowhere more so than in the United States. Yet, not thinking of politics as a domain from which collective intelligence can emerge just as much as from business, scientific or blogging communities, is an oversight. The work of Tom and his Co-Intelligence Institute is challenging it. We’re working on starting and nurturing a multi-disciplinary dialogue involving him and representatives of all the other streams of the CI field. Stay tuned.

Posted in Politics and CI | 2 Comments