gregorylent:
You didn’t get the point. It’s not about individuals getting wiser by using Twitter. By using it – consciously or not – they contribute to something much bigger, and that’s where you’ll find the collective wisdom that is mentioned here.

Vanessa:
“… it’s gotten to the point where we don’t even know how to harness the power of what we’ve created.”
I’d turn this around and say we don’t know yet how to create something with the technology at hand that we could harness. I think that is why it’s important to have a deeper understanding of the concepts that we think are emerging. So we can design with that in mind. The work of futurists, such as yours, carries great value because of this. I’m myself trying to get a grip on global consciousness, making it measurable, designable. Read my posts on the subject and let me know what you think!

cheers

Dan
@DanielStocker
http://collectiveweb.wordpress.com/

I’ve only been reading your blog for a few weeks now, so I haven’t read everything you’ve posted. Your writing is 1) well-written, 2) interesting, and 3) novel. The first few times I visited your blog, I was reminded of Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy of learning. You’re able to take information, evaluate and analyze it, and apply it to our current situasjon. (Sorry, I used to be a teacher, and am still a big fan of Bloom).

I have a lot of thoughts about the Collective Intelligence….One of them is this: Which language does the “Collective intelligence” speak? I’m a former New Yorker living in Europe, so the language barrier is something I think about often. Can we bring together the collective intelligence of the entire world when a good part of our world can’t communicate in English? What are your thoughts on this?

Also, you mentioned that maybe the Collective Intelligence could help solve some of the world’s problems (which is super). Have you thought about how this could happen? Do you think that politicians and world leaders need to get access to this “feed”, or are you thinking that the collective intelligence can change things by other methods? (Sorry, this last question wasn’t formulated too great, I’ve been living in a non-English-speaking country way too long!).

Hope that you keep feeding us with your incredibly reflective thoughts…

Personally, being very involved with my job, I feel worry not to have enough time to investigate and follow and learn and enjoy what I like.

Oh, yes, I would like to devote time to Artificial Intelligence, Life evolution, Science, and future studies, as well as philosophy and psychology…

And it is really difficult to choose, because every choice you make determines forever your future.

Maybe we will develop faster clocks, or larger sensing bandwidths, but the fundamental problem will remain. Selective attention is needed for whatever useful and successful result.
We need to focus our lens, to really heat our target.

It is nice to work social, and to romatically think that future will be crowd-sourced, but I am sufficiently old to know that really hard work is needed to build something. And undirected people do not work.

To put it hard way: A bunch of bored people tweeting about the last juicy website they found is not going to actively build something. Scientists and entrepeneurs are needed for this. People who actually likes to invent and make and get their hands and minds dirty with details.

Self contemplation is risky, as well as pure philosophy. We need to find the right balance between the introverse attitude, like Leonardo Da Vinci, a great mind working alone – centuries in advance of his times, and a perfect orchestra of performers holistically directed.

Directors are needed.
In most cases, sadly, crowds are sums of zeroes.
Directors needs to be protected and heavily filtered, to be proficient.

my 2c.

Marco

I read your post, and I agree that those features would greatly help with search and filtering content.

The only thing that I keep going back and forth about with filtering is, will too much of it make us miss something?

For instance, I still can’t figure out who to follow back. Some people have content that interests me, but is not related to understanding emerging media and technology trends, which is my focus. So I don’t follow them because I don’t want to be distracted, but at the same time, sometimes you get valuable insights from areas outside of your field of interest.

If I surround myself with information that’s self-reinforcing, will I be a victim to groupthink? I don’t want to lose my focus, but I also don’t want to miss the opportunity for a-ha moments.

what do you think?

As in biological systems, selective forget is a fundamental necessity in developing selective attention, which in turn is one of the fundamental necessities of consciousness.

marco (@mgua on twitter)

How much easier will it be when they realize they have a global network of educators and enthusiasts eager to offer help?