The Power of Many

‘Mob’ is a term generally lumbered with negative connotations – it’s the mentality of schoolyard bullies, race rioters and the witch-hunting residents of Salem. While these mobs are not the kind that make any positive contribution to society they all have one key feature in common – power. The power of a mob comes from the sum of its parts, the collective contributions of all its participants, and this power can of course be harnessed for the good of society as well. The problem comes with mobilising these participants. How do you organise a large group of people and coordinate their actions? How do you disseminate information and instructions so that it is accessible by everyone in the group? And how do you ensure the two-way flow of communication so that individuals can disseminate their own information and ideas to the rest of the group as well? In a physical sense this sounds like a logistical nightmare, but in an online, networked community it’s almost second nature.

With the emergence and widespread utilisation of enhanced internet and mobile communication technologies comes the emergence of what Howard Rheingold calls “smart mobs: the next social revolution”, discussed in detail in his book of the same name.

Consider the examples of smart mobs described by Mark Pesce in this blog post Mob Rules.

All of these demonstrate the power of collective intelligence (or lack thereof in examples such as the Cronulla race riots – even smart mobs can be destructive).

There are two main points that I draw from this post:

1. The infrastructure, software, cables, satellite signals and service providers are merely the means to the ends, the value of these components is simply in the connection they provide. Although without the tools such as internet forums, blogs, emails and mobile phone technologies the scale and success of networked communities we see today could not exist, these are only the facilitators of collaboration. It is the individual human participants that give these networks their power, “services mean nothing to the users of the network. The connection of individuals is everything” (Pesce 2007)

2. You don’t need to be an expert to be a valuable contributor to a network.

This idea that ‘no one knows everything but everyone knows something’ is the core concept behind collective intelligence. The ‘something’ of knowledge contributed by each individual becomes, in aggregate, a rich and highly developed information source. This is reflected in the example of the US Attorneys in Pesce’s blog post, in the success of the collaborative free encyclopedia project Wikipedia, and even to some extent in the political arena with the Rudd government’s innovation, the Australia 2020 Summit.

In a virtual network however this open, collaborative model is not without its problems. Firstly, the sheer volume of content that can potentially be created limits the effectiveness of collaboration. In online forums for example, individual contributions (in the form of posts or comments) are simply listed one after another in no logical order or structure other than the time that they were uploaded. Some posts may contain excellent ideas and be highly relevant, whereas others may be of poor quality containing little or no new information. This makes finding useful information very difficult and time-consuming. Secondly, having a completely open system leaves the network vulnerable to destructive participants who can compromise the quality of the source through deliberately adding incorrect information or attacking other users (referred to as flaming).

These issues of organisation and moderation become a problem particularly when attempting to convert the ideas and information that can be gained from online knowledge-sharing into workable solutions to social issues. This problem has been noted by researchers from MIT and the University of Naples, who are currently developing a new platform for online collaboration called a “collaboratorium”, with the aim of applying the result of collaboration to addressing the issue of climate change. The collaboratorium differs from free-form applications such as wikis in that all postings are organised into a logical ‘argument map’ structure, users can rate postings, and a percentage of the community act as moderators who identify where a post should fit in the collaboratorium structure and regulate the quality and relevance of contributions (Mangelsdorf 2008, 11).

So with a few tweaks and the combination of both expert and user-driven knowledge structures, online collaboration can move from simply sharing information to actively contributing to society.

Then again, who said it had to be constructive anyway? Check out these examples of flash mobs:

See what we can achieve by working together? Even if it doesn’t really contribute to the collective knowledge of society, it might just make you smile, and where’s the harm in that?

References

Mangelsdorf, M. 2008. A New Way to Collaborate. MIT Sloan Review 49 (3): 11. http://proquest.umi.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/pqdweb?index=0&did=1458948541&SrchMode=2&sid=1&Fmt=6&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1210823677&clientId=14394 (accessed May 10, 2008).

Pesce, M. 2007. Mob Rules. http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=27 (accessed March 6, 2008).