Collective Intelligence
Collective intelligence is a general term for intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals in a group. A group of people is not only more powerful and stronger than a single person, it can also act smarter than a single individual. A crowd for example can show surprising levels of wisdom ("The Wisdom of the Crowd") if there is a large variety in personal opinions. A swarm can exhibit fascinating forms of swarm intelligence.
Historic Developments
Collective intelligence can be found in all animal groups. Among humans it has existed since the first humans appeared on earth. Tribes of hunter-gatherers, ancient cultures, modern nations, and large corporations all act collectively with varying degrees of intelligence. New communication technologies now have enabled new forms of collective intelligence. Today the internet allows a huge number of people all over the world to work together on a single project. Wikipedia is the best example for such a distributed collaboration.
Links
- Wikipedia entry for collective intelligence
