“Crowdsourcing” - a solution to Global Warming? Part 1
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
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