The Hyper-Cortex of Human Collective-Intelligence Systems

I've just discovered a fascinating paper on The Hyper-Cortex of Human Collective-Intelligence Systems (.pdf) by Marko Antonio Rodriguez, a Ph.D student at the University of California at Santa Cruz and the Center for Evolution, Complexity, and Cognition at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His interests lie in collective-intelligence algorithms for societal-scale decision support systems.

I believe his pioneering work on that subject has tremendous importance for realizing the potential of an enlightened society. I know, it is a bold statement about the research of a young scholar but I see Marko as one of the rising stars on the academic field of computationally-supported collective intelligence. I bet, he will soon join in depth and future-responsiveness such pioneers of that field as Francis Heylighen and Pierre Lévy .

Why is their work so pivotal to the emergence of global-scale collective intelligence? Because without computer-enabled CI algorithms and "computer assisted imagination" we (as networks, organizations and humankind itself) will be defeated by the complexity tsunami compunded by unwise decisions of self-centered, individual and collective egos at all scale.

Growing better CI through better mental modeling

I woke up this morning with some insights about the relationship between mental modeling and collective intelligence. They seem new but one never knows; I could have already thought of them years ago or somebody else may have done so. What interests me is not whether they are new or not but how they may relate to older expression of the same "source idea". Do they improve the older ones thought by others or myself? What new meaning does become visible when they are overlaid on top of the older ones?

My first instinct is to check what connects the insights of this morning with other thoughts floating in the noosphere, is to google "mental modeling" AND "collective intelligence." Surprisingly low number of hits; only 5 or 7, depending on whether I spell it with modeling or modelling. One of them is a page where I find an intriguing definition of CI, which is built on the relationship of local and global cognition

My next step in finding out where do this morning's insights come from and what would be the most responsible way to take care of them, is to "spotlight" my hard disk. (Spotlight is the fantastic search tool, part of the Tiger operating system that came with my new G4 laptop.) Spotlight found a file of my notes of a conversation that I had with Peter Senge in the late 80's, whilst visiting with him at MIT. Before going into the past, you may want to read, first, the summary of this morning's thoughts:

Memories (and mental models) of generic structures

Searching my hard disk for my notes on mental modeling I found fragments of my conversation with Peter Senge about it, in the late 80's. Asking about how he sees the relationship of collective intelligence and team learning, he shared what follows.

A local-to-global definition of CI

I found yet another definition of CI worth to consider, on the "Leadership Decision Making" site. It says:

"Social Cognitive (SC) is the property of systems whereby the collective behaviors of entities interacting locally with their environment cause coherent functional global patterns to emerge. SC provides a basis with which it is possible to explore collective and distributed decision making without centralized control or the provision of a global model. To tackle the formation of a coherent social collective intelligence from individual behaviors, it must consider concepts related to self-organization, and the social bounds. It also includes the role played not only by the environmental media as a driving force for societal learning, but also by positive and negative feedback produced by the interactions among agents. The results will be the collective adaptation of a social community to its dynamic cultural environment."

Loads to ponder, isn't it? I'll come back to it when I will have more time; just wanted to put it here so that I don't loose sight of it.

Going local to global to local with Duane Elgin

Duane Elgin and his wife, Coleen, visited Amsterdam the last two days, and Friday evening, CommunityIntelligence honored their visit with a dinner dialogue (contributed to by 14 people), followed by delicious deliberations over not less delicious dessert at IEF Amsterdam.

It was a deep learning conversation, full of insights and inspirations, touching key issues of our times now and ahead, generously sprinkled by Duane's humor and playfulness. It would take many blog entries to give justice to the richness of the exchange. Here, I touch only briefly one stream of that evening's effervescent thought bubbles.

It started as a quote from the Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity's Future in my invitation to the dinner guests who came to welcome Duane and Coleen:

“I do not assume that electronic communication can or should carry the entire burden of human communication. It is vital that we combine the power of global communication with study circles and other forms of grassroots dialogue. With the combination of the two, a local-to-global conversation could emerge to shape the outlines of a sustainable future... If we could generate this kind of worldwide dialogue, it seems plausible that the human family could mobilize itself to begin building a future that we scarcely could have imagined a decade or two earlier.”