The most referenced concept of “Collective Intelligence” is the one of the MIT Center of Collective Intelligence (CCI): “Groups of individuals acting collectively in ways that seem intelligent”. I already said that it seems to me a weak definition because it is too vague and because it has a limited operative value.

I understand the reasons of the CCI to define a conceptual framework as flexible as possible, especially considering that it is indeed an emerging area of ​​study and it is intended to highlight the inter-disciplinary nature of this field. But even so, I think that trying to fit all the possible definitions in a politically correct one leads to a decaffeinated definition, whose main weakness is that it is not useful to discern.

A good concept is not one that tries to adapt to all existing perspectives, but the one that helps to understand the limits of the identity of something, that is to say, what do we leave inside and outside of the subject we try to define. In fact, often the most effective way to test the reliability of a concept is to see how much it helps to leave things out, that is, it serves to discern. Read more ›

Collective Intelligence (CI) generates increasing interest as an emerging discipline, but it seems difficult to find a clear and intuitive definition of what it means. It is tried to partly alleviate that deficit by adopting the terminology used by the MIT Center of Collective Intelligence but in my opinion the CCI intends to encompass so many scopes that lead to us to a definition very little operative.

For example, Thomas Malone and his team often use this definition of CI: “Groups of Individuals acting collectively in ways that seems intelligent“. Quite frankly, I do not know if this clarifies anything or adds more confusion for people like me who are looking to put theory into action.

The ontological advances in the field of CI either do not seem to give great results. We do not have a conceptual framework that serves to agree on the narrative. The universe of disciplines that converges here is broad, and knowledge is very fragmented. The diversity is good, but there is an excess of cognitive dispersion that does not help to achieve consistent progress. In fact, I know that is difficult to categorize the issues or to have a taxonomy that contributes order when we want to accede to research results. So it seems necessary to review and to simplify the narrative we use to reach more people. Therefore I’ll try to explain what I mean by Collective Intelligence as intuitive as possible, although I do not know if I will be able to 🙁 Read more ›