Collective Intelligence

First off let me apologize for this being posted a day late. My internet crashed hard last night while I was working on reading up on the material and stayed down.

Now that thats out of the way I’ll get started. First off i decided to find what I could on defining collective intelligence first and foremost. A pure definition I found in the first line of this wiki article. “Collective intelligence is a form of intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals.” I also found this blog on the subject which wasn’t that great but the video is trippy and will lodge the Idea in your head fairly well. I also found this blog that seems to be about nothing else but the way collective intelligence can actually make an individual grow and when an individual grows how it benefits the collective intelligence. I particularly like the little graphic at the bottom because it reinforces the idea of a symbiotic relationship between the individual and the collective.
Anyway defining it was well and good but then I needed to look into how the concept applies to our field of work. Well looking back at the work we did last week on PLEs and the talks on utilizing blogs brought to my mind ways the concepts could be used to an individuals advantage and so I set out to find out what others might have to say on the subject. This article really explains the importance of collective intelligence in marketing. I think that is a good example of showing how we as web designers will be using the concept of collective intelligence in our work. We wont just be designing sites that give customers what they want but also ones that get more individualized as the customer uses it. This kind of work will benefit both the customer and our clients and will be expected of us in the future.