Per my previous post, I have accessed the MIT Center for collective Intelligence site to further understand their efforts in utilizing “crowdsourcing” to address the issues around Global Climate Change and sustainability. It is clear that they see the value. How and when the benefits are realized will take time to unfold. However, MIT has gone so far as to create what they have termed a Climate Collabortorium. Here is how Founder Professor Thomas Malone describes the activities of the Climate Collabotoroium.
What we’re trying to do here at the Center for Collective Intelligence with our Climate Collaboratorium is what we call radically open computer modeling to bring the spirit of systems like Wikipedia and Linux to the problem of global climate change. We want thousands of people all over the world to be able to interact with and modify the system, create real quantitative representations of plans for what we could do.
We also want them to be able to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different plans in an organized way, and we want them to be able to collectively select the most promising plans from all the possibilities that have been proposed.
In his interview on the MIT Sloan Business School Website, All Together Now (or, Can Collective Intelligence Save the Planet?) Professor Malone outlines his belief that the potential for collective intelligence can be a very powerful tool to address the challenges raised by Global Climate Change.
To solve the climate problem, we need a huge range of expertise. We’ve got to know things about the physics of the upper atmosphere and the chemistry of the oceans and the economics of carbon taxes and the psychology of consumers who are making decisions about when to drive versus take public transportation. Collective intelligence mechanisms are ideal for bringing together those diverse kinds of knowledge.
To download a copy of the first working paper created by the Climate Collabotorium click on this-Can We Exploit Collective Intelligence for Collaborative Deliberation? The Case of the Climate Change Collaboratorium.
-FR
Sustainability, Uncategorized, climate change
Center For Collective Intelligence, climate change, Climate Collabotorium, Crowdsourcing, MIT Sloan Schoolof Business, Sustainability
Just finished Jeff Howe’s Crowdsourcing-Why The Power Of The Crowd Is Driving The Future of Business and it reinforced a suspicion I had, since meeting Clay Shirky at an event this last spring. Clay Shirky is the author of Here Comes Everybody, which along with Crowdsourcing examines the internet’s ability to create communities and leverage the collective intelligence of those communities to create new and innovative ways of social and business interaction. Both books give excellent examples of the power of crowdsourcing. Describing how, by tapping into their inherent creative and technical knowledge base, thousands (and at times millions) of interconnected individuals have come together to solve problems, create new online communities and dramatically reshape business models. Here’ is Howe’s description of the potential of crowdsourcing,
Crowdsourcing has the potential to correct a long-standing human conundrum. The amount of knowledge and talent dispersed among the numerous members of our species has always vastly outstripped our capacity to harness those invaluable quantaties. Instead, it withers on the vine for want of an outlet. Crowdsourcing is the mechanism by which such talent and knowledge is matched to those in need of it. It poses a tantalizing question: What if the solutions to our greatest problems weren’t waiting to be conceived, but already existed somewhere, just waiting to be found, in the warp and weave of this vibrant human network?”
Now here’s the interesting part in reference to this blog. When I met Clay Shirky I began to consider the possibility that there might be some way to utilize intelligence of the “crowd” to solve some of the problems presented by Climate Change and/or Global Warming. So in that spirit I picked up “Crowdsourcing.” I am reading it (finished it two days, it was that engrossing), and there on page 166, I see that the MIT Center For Collective Intelligence is attempting to “crowdsource” the viability of solutions to health care and yes…climate change. Fair enough, but what I found upon visiting the Center for Collective Intelligence is fascinating. There is an interview with Professor Thomas Malone, who launched the Center for Collective Intelligence. In the interview All Together Now (or, Can Collective Intelligence Save the Planet?), Malone outlines what the Center is doing as well as, his thoughts on sustainability in general. It will challenge how many of us view sustainability and will force us to look differently at how we approach solutions. In part 2 of this post, I will discuss the Malone interview and describe the Center’s activities around climate change as well as sustainability in general. -FR
Sustainability, climate change
Clay Shirky, climate change, Crowdsourcing, Global Warming, Here Comes Everybody, Jeff Howe, MIT Center For Collective Intelligence, Sustainability
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