I just discovered a very interesting post through a blogoscope entry about Google Knol. It is located in Anil Dash’s blog and is called ‘Google and the theory of mind‘.

He gives some examples, why google is not aware of what others are aware. One of these examples is the google Knol announcement almost a week ago.

What really drew my attenion is, that allthough the Knol announcement clarifies that the content will also be available to other search engines, Anil Dash notes that Knol will be hosted and indexed by google.

“This presents inherent conflicts in the ranking of content, as well as disincentives for content creators to control the environment in which their content is published. This necessarily disadvantages competing search engines, but more importantly eliminates the ability for content creators to innovate in the area of content presentation or enhancement.”

A very well-argumented post, which surely puts the subject under a new perspective. Take a look at it.

Update [22.12.07]: Masternewnmedia posted today a great article on the subject. Google Knol and wikipedia: Risks, opportunities, challenges

In a previous post about aggregation of information I noted the role of the administrator, as someone who will moderate the discourse. Teut Weidemann in his interview remarked that “…total control will destroy a community pretty fast”. So indirect control actually means letting the community takes its own course and interfere only when things really go out of hand.

Learning from software

But indirect control has one more implication. Consider the StarLogo software. It is a software which demonstrates the development of bottom-up systems but also obeys to a centralized control; namely the commands of the programmer.

But the programmer does not define what will StarLogo generate. Instead he/she gives the micromotives (actions) and lets the software evolve a macrobehavior of its own. The programmer does not control the process any more.

Do you remember Gearheads, the computer game with the windup toys on a chess board? It uses the same principle. You released the toys and then it was up to them how the game would develop (sorry I couldn’t find a proper link to the game; help would be appreciated).

To summarize

So what do such software tell us? That indirect control - apart from the obvious role already mentioned - is about providing tools to the community. Tools, which will give the group the necessary input in order to nourish a healthy discussion. Now its up to you to decide the form these tools can take.

It may be questions, polls or surveys. It may be the way you moderate comments (or comment on others - they are part of your network too). Let your imagination go wild. ‘Navigating’ your community correctly, giving the right input, will draw the attention of a diverse and independent group; and in the end of the process (although you can suggest that this process sometimes never ends) the subject of discussion will be examined under many perspectives and with great objectivity.

While thinking about the widely discussed ‘Davos Question‘, I asked myself if we are really a wise crowd. What makes a crowd (which under different circumstances behaves completely irrationally) make the right decisions? I leave aside for a moment my posts on aggregating information. Instead i want to point to some other interesting posts on collective intelligence and the wisdom of crowds:

• US Consumers: a wise crowd . An interesting example.
• If there’s wisdom in crowds - why don’t we let the masses rule? Learning from nature; with an insightful link
• Wisdom of the crowd and the bullwhip effect
• Mining the wisdom of crowds . An explanation of a powerful strategy

And the other side of the story:

• Maybe the crowd is not wise
• When crowds aren’t wise; the low fat diet cascade. When informational cascades go wrong.

The question still remains? Are we a wise crowd? And if so, will our views be heard?

Google’s blog posted an article on the ‘Davos question’, which is: “What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?”

Every year, many of the world’s top leaders from politics, business and the global community — including some of our own — attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss how to make the world a better place. This year, we wanted to give people around the world the chance to join them, and help them, by submitting their own answers to “the Davos Question” according to google’s post.

The principle is that everyone of us should post a short youtube clip to contribute in the improvement of the world (after we think about it during the christmas period). [see also the TechNewsSource post on the subject]
The wisdom of crowds

The Davos question is surely an initiative that shows its trust to the people. It takes advantage of the social web and gives the opportunity to everyone to contribute to the commons. It applies the concept of collective intelligence in its full extent, since it invites a group of diverse, independent individuals to collectively make a decision/suggestion. After all democracy and free markets are based on this ideal.

Some suggestions are already on the run:

• Scobleizer has a suggestion
• Compasion in politics has a post too.

Criticism

Although the Davos initiative honestly makes me very glad, I can’t stop being also a bit skeptical. The reasons are numerous:

• is there really one answer to such a question? Where should we begin? Environment, corruption, wealth, war. The questions sounds a little bit naive.
• will really world’s top leaders listen to the online community?
• My skeptical, conspiracy-prone alter ego, suggests that it is just a way to make the crowd feel like they actually contribute to this discourse.

I really don’t know what to expect. My optimistic side surely finds the Davos question on youtube really great. My pessimistic side is a bit more critical (a view also seen by a mashable post: Davos Question: PR move or security measure?). But anyway I will observe the development of the online (and offline) discussion - and also participate in it - and keep you posted.

But honestly now, how do you find this proposal of an open, online, Davos question?

I noted earlier the paradox between a group of independent individuals and the social web: the social aspect of human interaction, sets influence between the group members as a standard. The structure of the network itself can assist in avoiding this paradox.

Decentralization and the collective intelligence

The notion of collective intelligence takes decentralization as a prerequisite. When the community consists of a diverse and independent set of people, who all work together on the same problem, then no central control is required. The community can evolve on its own, powered only by the initiatives of its contributors.

In parallel, self organization fosters specialization – specialization of interests, of attention, of labor. Each member of the group can concentrate on a specific subject, according to its interests and knowledge. Apart from the fact, that specialization increases efficiency and productivity it also encourages diversity of opinions. Dividing a subject in subcategories and appointing users to work on them, will cultivate concentration and increment of knowledge.

The strength of self organization

The strength of self organization is that it allows people to be close to the actual problem and coordinate their activities, while each one concentrates on a special topic. But remember: the purpose of the community is to aggregate information; to take the specialized, local knowledge and make them collectively and globally useful.

The emergence of self organization

Just like Google’s search engine collects local information of millions of websites to make the search quicker or like the linux operating system collects user submitted information and bugs for improvement, so a community needs an administrator to take over this responsibility.

In both Google’s and Linux’s cases – and actually in every emergent system – we are talking about a network, which has the ability to adapt to new data. In typical emergent systems, this happens with a higher-level intelligence, which is aggregating the local knowledge to adjust the global system to fresh information. It transforms the microbehavior of the agents to a macrobehavior. Perhaps, this view finds an application when we are dealing with software (Google’s search robots), but in social structures the term ‘higher intelligence’ sounds exaggerated.

In the social web, groups do not need someone who will make the final decision. Instead they require an administrator who will moderate the whole process, who will indirectly control the community.

Values and self-organization is an interesting entry about the subject. Also Alex Iskold wrote an article about the digg effect and its self-organized structure.

“In the 1950s the social psychologist Solomon Asch conducted a famous experiment that highlighted the fragility of the person in a mass society when he is confronted with the contrary opinion of a majority, and the tendency to conform even if this means to go against the person’s basic perceptions.” (Solomon Asch; Opinions and social pressure)

From diversity to independence

Either by willingness to respect the informational signals shared by group members of a particular belief or by fear of dislike, people usually do not speak out their opinion. The informational and social influence can have a great impact in the decision of an individual.

An attribute that directly derives from diversity, is independence. Especially, when we are dealing with a group of diverse degrees of expertise, independence is necessary for the less experienced to not hesitate in expressing his/her views or questions.

I don’t see independence as a a form of isolation, but instead as a relative freedom from the influence of others. Having independent individuals in a group, prohibits the correlation of mistakes people make and verifies that new information will come to light. The misjudgment of a person, regardless of her knowledge degree, will not change the collective thought. Apart from that, autonomous individuals will bring diverse perspectives to the group.

Naturally I’m not implying, that with independence comes rationality and impartiality, but surely, under the correct circumstances, irrationality will not influence the rest of the group.

Independence in emergent systems and social networks

An emergent system can easily develop independence, since the constituting agents are ignorant of the overall state of the network. They are carrying out a simple, repetitive task guided by a pattern recognition system. But accomplishing independence in a social network can be a very difficult task.

In a previous post about social representations, I noted how strongly the private and public sphere can change people’s perspective. It seems as if influence were inescapable.

People are primarily social beings; they are constantly trying to expand their knowledge and perception by interacting with each other. The social web is – as the term implies – based on this function. It is founded on the principle of interaction between individuals and not between computers. Still though, collective decisions are most likely to be good ones as long as they are made by people with diverse opinions reaching independent conclusions, relying mainly on private information.

The question that rationally follows, is how can a community overcome this paradox. Creating a network, which consists of diverse, independent individuals seems not adequate enough to produce correctly aggregated information.

I started on Friday talking about aggregation of information and its potential in producing objective and spherical knowldedge. The day after (on Saturday) I noted the emergent behavior such networks can develop.

Just a reminder; these series of posts are supposed to highlight the difference between having a set of experts in your network/community/system/blogroll/name-it-as-you-wish and having an open public, without posing any restrictions. In other words the series are about the fundamental difference between Google’s Knol and wikipedia.

Today I will continue this series of posts, explaining the four preconditions necessary for a correct aggregation.

Diversity; an example

Let us consider a blog with liberal political content, which mostly references other liberal blogs. It is logical to presume that the knowledge aggregated from these blogs will also be liberal – an one sided view of the political system. The network these blogs create, will in its turn mostly gather users who also agree with this perspective. The impact to the collective information is obvious; it will treat all political matters liberally. But apart from that, the network will consist of a small liberal group of people excluding other opinions and accordingly viewers. An objective network (meaning one that sees subjects under different perspectives) cultivates constructive discussions and therefore draws the interest of a wider public. It also sets the tone in which discussions take place and a common goal that people can join in attempting to reach.

Diversity of perpectives

Emergent systems manage to function so well, because a collective macrobehavior is achieved when the system consists of a multitude of agents, each one attributed with a simple operation. In other words emergence is accomplished (among other reasons) due to the multitude of different agents. Emergence relies on the diversity of its agents.

The Condorcet Jury theorem, which I also mentioned in an earlier post, relies on the fact that in a diverse group the chances that at least someone will propose a new, radical idea is increased. Also influence between individuals or clustering of opinions are less likely to appear in a diverse group. This means that the information collected will approach an objective view of the subject.

Diversity of expertise

A diverse group does not only imply collecting a set of different perspectives about a topic. It also means creating a group of individuals with different grade of expertise and knowledge. Homogeneous groups have the tendency to refrain from investigating alternatives, they find it harder to continue learning and thus bring less new information in the community. Less experienced members will provide fresh aspects and propose questions, which under different circumstances would not be expressed.

Conclusion

We must keep in mind that the focus of a community is not to consist of wise individuals. Instead it concentrates on making wise decisions. I do not suggest here that a diverse group of uninformed individuals could collectively succeed more than one of experts. But an assemblage of people with various degrees of insight, may give better results than a few specialists.

Naturally, when i use words like ‘creating a community’ or ‘producing collective knowledge’, I do not mean that you can just choose who contributes to your network. (you might be able to guide it a bit, but in the end its out of your hands). On the contrary the traits, challenges and participators of your network will act as a magnet to a diverse group.

The question that emerges is: ‘Do you want to be open to everybody and hope for the best, or do you want to invite only experts and observe a clustering of knowledge and perspectives?