Collective Intelligence: What is collective intelligence and augmented social cognition?
Diane | December 31, 2007Collective Intelligence
Collective intelligencecan be defined as an organically grown bank of knowlege, which providesthe group with a totalsum of knowledge that is fargreater than what each individual member could produce or realize on their own. Information within collective intelligenceis organizednaturally according to each member’s interest and intention. Members of the group become smarter by collaboratively definingand organizing information to aid in each other’sunderstanding.Collective intelligence isone of thecornerstone concepts of Web 2.0 technologies.
PARC research is nowresearching and developing concepts related toaugmented social cognition. They define augmented social cognition as being:
Supported by systems, the enhancement of the ability of a group to remember, think, and reason; the system-supported construction of knowledge structures by a group. (Chi, 2007)
When PARC becomes focused on a particular dimension of research it behooves us to take notice. PARC has continually produced revolutionary technologies over the years that have completely changed the way we live and work. They created the ability for us tonetwork computers using the Ethernet, created graphical user interfaces (GUI), object oriented programming, and laser printing to name just a few of their breakthroughs. (PARC, 2007) PARC at this time has over “170 researchers from the physical, computer, biological, and social sciences (80% of whom hold doctoral degrees). “Employees come from 46 different countries, and include native speakers of virtually every major language. This diversity contributes to an environment in which collaboration is multi-dimensional, cutting across cultures, laboratories, and scientific disciplines.
Here is Ed Chi’s presentation on augmented social cognition within Google Talk. The video is entitled: “Social information foraging and collaboratve search: Augmented social cognition from social foraging to social sensemaking.” (Chi, 2007)
Additional Resources:
Social information foraging and collaborative search: PDF
References
Chi, Ed. (2007). Augmented social cognition. Retrieved December 31, 2007, from http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/2007/05/augmented-social-cognition.html
Chi, Ed. (2007). Social information foraging and collaborative search: Augmented social cognition from social foraging to social sensemaking. Retrieved December 31, 2007, from http://www.parc.com/research/projects/collaborativesystems/default.html
PARC Research. (2007). Retrieved December 31, 2007, from http://www.parc.com/research/projects/collaborativesystems/default.html





