Futures Of Learning Communities, Myths Of Collective Intelligence Options Rating

[Jonny Cache]

A large number of Self-Styled Collective Intelligence Projects — Citizendium, Digital Universe, DMOZ, Nupedia, Textop, and last alphabetically but far from the least significantly, Wikipedia — have turned out to be, or seem fated to be, major disappointments to those observers and workers who have been dreaming of such things and working to build such things from the day they first touched that Monolith in Olduvai Gorge.

I'm sure you don't need Euclid's algorithm to work out the common denominator of most of those projects, but maybe it would help to tease out a bit more expressly some of the design factors that have led them to, or will most likely lead them to, the despair of all our dreams and work.

Back after coffee ...

Jonny

[Jonny Cache]

Not Of Necessity Random Readings

Before I lose track of things, I will reserve this page for collecting some readings that come to mind.

Collective Intelligence and Society of Mind

Just from my own reading of past and passing literature on the subject, I count a revival of these Baron von Münchhausen Collective Bootstrap ideas coming every 20 years or so since the 1940's, though I may have lost track of every last blip on the radar in the last decade or so. Certainly one of the most well-brought-up 2nd or 3rd childhoods of the Social Intelligence Bootstrap (SIB) idea is due to none other than Marvin Minsky taking up the sound of one gauntlet clapping, as recounted in his book of the mid 1980's:

• Minsky, Marvin (1986), The Society of Mind, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY.

Learning Communities and Learning Organizations

Learning Communities and Learning Organizations are different things, but they do share a large fund of ideas that derives from the study of adaptive systems, cybernetics, optimal control systems, and systems theory in general. In particular, theory and practice in both areas recognize the importance of Learning About Learning, Learning How To Learn, or Second Order Learning.

• Theory. Peter M. Senge (1990), The Fifth Discipline : The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Doubleday, New York, NY.
• Practice. Peter M. Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, Richard B. Ross, Bryan J. Smith (1994), The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook : Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization, Doubleday, New York, NY.

Charisma, Authority, Bureaucracy

On the connections between politics, religion, and other topics under the heading of Fifty Ways To Lose Your Friends, the all time sine qua non is:

• Weber, Max (1930), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Talcott Parsons (trans.), Anthony Giddens (intro.), Harper Collins, 1930. Reprinted, Routledge, London, UK, 1992. First published in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 1904–1905. Translated from the revised version in Weber's Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (Collected Essays on the Sociology of Religion), 1920–1921.

Especially pertinent to our discussion are Weber's ideas about the Conversion Of Motivation (COM) and the Routinization Of Charisma (ROC).

Further Reading

• See GetMeta Wreads

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Fri 23rd March 2007, 4:54am