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?

In the last days I have seen several posts about the Google Knol project in relationship to wikipedia and its role in the aggregation of knowledge. I will list here all the links that I found concerning Knol, in order to get a spherical view of the subject. I must admit that most posts are severely criticizing Knol. I wonder if the reason is the blogosphere I have created around me - or if the positive views are actually so few (or so silent).

• Google’s official blog announces Knol
• Marshall Kirkpatric takes a short, objective view of Knol. Along with a small comment of Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki.
• Google Knol: Wikipedia with a face, or the new squido? My favourite (and most difficult) question about the Knol Project: Is highlighting the author the real answer? Also my posts Google’s Knol and the role of the author along with Authorship in the blogosphere are a couple of comments on the subject.
• Sizlopedia with the post “Google Knol free wikipedia” poses the question Knol= wikipedia + social networks. Why?
• Googlepedia. The term I love the most.
• Mashable with an interesting poll: Is google Knol a wikipedia killer? Also on mashable, a very thorough article “Google Knol more of the same“. Again talking about authorship and heavily criticizing Knol.
• Google Knol and the long trail. Bloggasm on ‘Google to create its own version of wikipedia‘.
• Nick Carr and ‘Google takes aim at wikipedia‘. Maybe the article that started the avalanche, with a list of very interesting comments.
• Wired about ‘Google’s Knol not being a threat to wikipedia‘
• Also two interesting views on the subject from wiredamp ‘knol and wikipedia begin to dance‘ and ‘Google to destroy wikipedia?‘
• Finally a fresh blog. Its title speaks for itself: savewikipeidia.wordpress.com
  

The entries of the above articles range from neutral to extremely critical to the Google Knol project. I agree with the opinion that Knol is not a threat wikipedia. They are targeting different groups. But, although I too was critical to Knol, I can see a positive side to the project.

• Authorship comes along with trustworthiness. If anyone of you is a student, you’ll understand the importance of this note.
• In some subjects neutrality is not the best solution. Debates and differences of opinion can occassionally bring better results.
• Knol has certainly more features. Comments, questions, rating, reviewing, referencing. These are important stuff. If used correctly can bring very good results. Someone commented on one of the above posts (sorry I don’t remember which post, or who commented), that knol takes the attributes of blog in wiki format. I like this feature.

The question that stands out, is how will people contribute to this community? And how will google handle this community?

If you have any additional posts about Knol and wikipedia, tell the group; leave a comment.

In the late ’90s Marvin Minsky published a book called ‘Mentopolis’. He documented the human brain as a distributed network, consisting of a multiple agents, where each one of those agents is responsiple for just one operation. In the picture below, for example, he proposed that in order for our brain to recognize an apple all these agents should be set in motion. The ‘color’ agent should collect his information and send it to the ‘look to’ agent, who in his turn would communicate with the ‘place’ agent and so forth. My interest in this network (called the find-machine by Minsky) is not its credibility but its properties and attributes.

Emergent networks

The system Minsky composed was a typical example of an emergent network, namely a system with multiple agents dynamically interacting in multiple ways, following local rules and oblivious to any higher-level instructions. Minsky visualized a perfectly functioning system, with absolutely no central control. The nodes (meaning the agents) are interacting in order for their microbehavior (sorting color, size, etc.) to result in a macrobehavior (perceiving the object). Such organizations are present in nature (see the work of Deborah Gordon on the emergent behavior of ants), computer software and even in the structure of cities and are giving us a glimpse of networks, which correctly aggregate information.

Emergent systems function so perfectly, because they work with neighbor interaction, feedback, pattern recognition and indirect control. They are designed to learn from the ground level, to take advantage of local knowledge for an upper goal. Through interaction, they are capable of recognizing patterns and indirectly controlling the whole system.

Emergent social web

I’m not implying that the social web undertakes a completely emergent behavior. We are dealing neither with oblivious users nor with pattern recognition systems (at least not yet). But still there are perfectly functioning communities, which adopt the traits of an emergent behavior (probably slashdot, wikipedia and the linux operating system being the most profound examples). There is not any administrator – at least not in the traditional sense – leading the community. The users are self organized, sometimes each one responsible for a specific activity and always working together to provide quality material. Under that perspective we are experiencing the formation of online emergent networks, which are developing a life of their own – a life without any central control.

But what makes such behavior so successful? As I argued on my previous post regarding aggregation of knowledge (and your additions are mostly welcome on this), their success lies on:

• diversity
• independence
• indirect control
• self-organization

Conclusion

If such systems (and among them is the World Wide Web itself) manage so successfully to collect knowledge without any central power, why should we accept the control of any authority, which would define who posts which article and who links where? Years of experience show us that such ‘problems’ of the web can regulate themselves.

In following posts I will concentrate explicitly on each of the above-named traits of emergent networks with the hope of justifying my thesis, that expertise is not the only path to knowledge.

For this post the book of Steven Johnson: Emergence and of Marvin Minsky: Mentopolis (where the photo also comes from; original was in german, I translated it) where of great assistance.

A book in progess and one more advocate for collaborative projects and the wisdom of crowds:
How Experts Fail: The Patterns and Situations in Which Experts Are Less Intelligent Than Non-Experts.

Similar books are Cass R. Sunstein: Infotopia, Howard Rheingold: Smart Mobs;the next social revolution, James Surowiecki: The wisdom of crowds.

But ‘How experts Fail’ is in wiki format. Take a look and edit it!