[Fis] [Fwd: closing the session] John Prpic

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: closing the session
Date: 	Sun, 27 Apr 2014 16:30:44 -0700
From: 	John Prpic <prpic at sfu.ca>
To: 	Pedro C. Marijuan <pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es>



Dear FIS'ers,

In an effort to put the latest session formally to bed, please allow me 
to highlight some of the excellent food for thought that was put forward 
by the group in respect to "Collective Intelligence". I'll attempt to 
roughly follow the chronological order in which the discussion was 
received, and within this, I'll highlight passages that I thought were 
especially interesting, salient, insightful or provocative. 


 From Pedro:
"_Along the biggest social transformations, the "new information orders" 
have been generated precisely by new ways to circulate 
knowledge/information across social agents_--often kept away from the 
previous informational order established. But there is a difference, in 
my opinion, in the topic addressed by John P., it is _the intriguing, 
more direct involvement of software beyond the rather passive, 
underground role it generally plays_.  "Organizational processes frozen 
into the artifact--though not fossilized". Information Technologies are 
producing an amazing mix of new practices and new networkings that 
generate growing impacts in economic activities, and in the capability 
to create new solutions and innovations...Brave New World? Not yet, but 
who knows..."

 >From Bob Logan:
"_What is a culture after all but a form of collective intelligence._ 
Eric Havelock called myths the tribal encyclopedia. With writing the 
collectivity of intelligence grew wider as evidenced by the scholars of 
Ancient Greeks who created a collective intelligence through their 
writing. The printing press was the next ramping up of collective 
intelligence as the circle of intelligences contributing to a particular 
project dramatically increased. The ability to have a reliable way of 
storing and sharing experimental data contributed in no small way to the 
scientific revolution. Other fields of study thrived as a result of 
print IT such as philosophy, literature, history, economics etc etc. The 
printing press also contributed to the emergence of modern democracy. 
_With the coming of electricity and electrically configured IT the 
collectivity of intelligence passed through another phase transition_. 
Marshall McLuhan reflecting on this development well before the 
emergence of digital IT wrote:"

"The university and school of the future must be a means of total 
community participation, not in the consumption of available knowledge, 
but in the creation of completely unavailable insights. The overwhelming 
obstacle to such community participation in problem solving and research 
at the top levels, is the reluctance to admit, and to describe, in 
detail their difficulties and their ignorance. _There is no kind of 
problem that baffles one or a dozen experts that cannot be solved at 
once by a million minds that are given a chance simultaneously to tackle 
a problem._ The satisfaction of individual prestige, which we formerly 
derived from the possession of expertise, must now yield to the much 
greater satisfactions of dialogue and group discovery. The task yields 
to the task force.(Convocation address U. of Alberta 1971)."

"_And now we come to the next phase transition in collective 
intelligence that we may identify with the Internet and other forms of 
digital IT_. This development is both new and old at the same time. It 
is old as I have argued since language and culture, writing, the 
printing press, electric mass media each represented an internet of 
sorts metaphorically speaking. _What is new is the magnitude and scale 
of the collectivity __today_, which allows a total democratization of 
view points and insights. Since a quantitative change can also be a 
quantitative change_ the current era of intelligence collectivities is 
new and one might even say a revolutionary change_. For example a 
transition from representative democracy to participatory democracy. To 
conclude: Yes there is such a thing as Collective Intelligence - It has 
been with us since the emergence of Homo sapiens _and it defines the 
human condition._ As we push ahead to explore new frontiers of 
collective intelligence it is prudent to take into account our past 
experience with this phenomenon. Plus ca change plus ca le meme chose". 


 From Steven:
"However, _can we measure the objective efficiency of a group by 
considering__ the problems solved by individuals working together in 
groups _such that we may identify whether there is an environment 
independent quantifiable addition or loss of efficiency in all cases? 
Perhaps, but one suspects not. Bottomline: I think you must stop 
worrying about collective intelligence and speak to quantifiable 
efficiencies in all cases".


 From Guy:
"_I think of collective intelligence as synonymous with collective 
information processing_. I would not test for its existence by asking if 
group-level action is smart or adaptive, nor do I think it is relevant 
to ask whether collective intelligence informed or misinformed 
individuals.  I would say that in the classic example of eusocial insect 
colonies (like honey bees, for example) _there is no reasonable doubt 
that information is processed at the level of the full colony, which can 
be detected by the coordination of individual activities into coherent 
colony-level behavior_. _Synchronization and complementarity of 
individual actions reflect the top-down influences of colony-level 
information processing._ It is the existential question that I think is 
key here, and I hope our conversation includes objective ways to detect 
the existence or absence of instances where a collective intelligence 
has manifested as a way to keep this concept more tangible and less 
metaphorical".


 From John Collier:
"Guy, This looks fruitful, but it might be argued that the exchanges of 
information in a colony can be reduced to individual exchanges and 
interactions, and thus there is not really any activity that is 
holistic. This is what Steven is doing with his example of pyramid 
building. _On the other hand, with ants, for example, it has been shown 
by de Neuberg and others that in ant colonies the interactions cannot be 
reduced, but produce complex organization that only makes sense at a 
higher level of __behaviour._ Examples are nest building and bridge 
building, among others. I assume the same is true for humans. For 
example, in the pyramid case, why is it being built, why are people so 
motivated to cooperate on such a ridiculous project? Contrary to 
widespread opinion the workers were not slaves, but they were individual 
people._ I doubt this can be explained at the individual level. If ants 
have complexly__ organized behaviour, then surely humans do as well -- 
we are far more complex, and our social interactions are far more complex"_.


 From Loet:
"Beyond the case of pyramids, one can think of more abstract forms of 
social organization _such as the rule of law as a supra-individual 
coordination mechanism_.  I doubt that “collective intelligence” is the 
fruitful category. _As in the rule of law, it seems to me that 
codification of the communication (e.g.,__ legislation and 
jurisprudence) are the vehicles_. In other words, the quality of the 
communication is more important than the individual or sum total of 
reflections".


 From Joseph:
"...Thus, neither John's papers (please excuse me if I have missed it), 
nor the postings so far,_ have addressed the issue of knowledge vs. 
intelligence_... I would like it to be explained in what this 
intelligence consists. In other words, are we dealing with 
knowledge-as-such (stored and shared data) or capability for effecting 
change. John P. does say that crowd capability is directed at processing 
knowledge, but does this exhaust the content of the concept of 
intelligence as capability?"


"My next point is the following: it is easy to see how the interaction 
of two individuals can lead to the emergence of new behavior and 
capability of behavior. An example of the former is interactional 
convergence. The second is a learning process. _I tend to associate 
capability for __behavior with intelligence_. The subsequent interaction 
of a third individual with the result of the initial interaction, or one 
of the individuals involved in it leads to further emergence of the same 
kind. _Iteration of this process, in my conception, focuses on 
the individual-group interaction as its locus. On this basis, 
collective intelligence appears with two or three people._ My first 
question, therefore,_ is whether one can in fact consider 
that__ multiple interactions at the same time constitute 
collective intelligence in themselves, or whether there is always the 
need to take __into account the one-many relation_, as well as, joining 
Loet, the qualitative aspects of the communications involved in the 
interactions".


"John P.'s response, to MY question, then, was as broad as it was 
useful,_ bringing out a clear tension between IT and non-IT 
perspectives._ The situation, the need for work on the 'nebulous 
concept' of intelligence is similar to that in the effort of some 
people, in China and elsewhere, to define an Intelligence Science as 
opposed to Artificial Intelligence. _And was not the start of 
Information Science by Pedro and Michael Conrad in part as opposition to 
information as (just) technology_? . As those familiar with my positions 
will know, I am much more interested in non-IT-mediated Collective 
Intelligence (NITCI), _which I agree exists provided one takes a process 
standpoint which is focused not only on outcomes but 'upstream'._ Here 
is where John P.'s reference to 'ability to perform' comes in for 
further analysis. _In my conception, the existence of, and interaction 
between, collective and individual processes is not only possible but a 
basic logical and ontological feature of intelligence in general_....One 
possible next step would be _to define both Individual and Collective 
Intelligence in terms of the cognitive process of CREATIVITY_. Absent 
this, the most powerful capability for Promethean outcomes will not be 
intelligence in my book. 



So I hope that this summary is useful in highlighting what was clearly a 
fascinating discussion. Please accept my personal thanks for your 
participation, and for lending your insight and experience to the 
cause. There's no doubt in my mind that this discussion will have a long 
lasting beneficial impact on my research, and if you'd like to continue 
the conversation in some form, please don't ever hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks so much!

Best,
John Prpic




-- 
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.iacs at aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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