Collective Intelligence: Heaven on earth?

This week I enjoyed two additional readings about media convergence. I found the article The Reinvention of the World Wide Web to be very engaging. Its main intent was to encourage readers to consider redefining how we think about the World Wide Web and tend to define it by comparing it to print media. Hilf encourages us to expand our thinking past the concept of comparison and develop a new model to define the Web that encompasses its main components: accessible information and efficient communication.

Next, the chapter Spoiling Survivor from the text Convergence Culture, was equally engaging and enlightened me to the world of spoiling reality television season plots on the Internet. The chapter discusses the lengths and depths that spoilers go to involving modern technology to figure out the location, cast list and winner of each Survivor season. The chapter also details the concepts of collective intelligence, knowledge communities and the expert paradigm. Although I would not ordinarily be interested in the ins and outs of reality television, the chapter gives a intriguing look inside the spoiler community and an elitist sub-culture known as the Brain Trust that has emerged.

There were so many great tidbits of information that revealed itself to me in the readings, but if I had to narrow down to three, I would focus on the following:

• "Spoiling emerged from the mismatch between temporalities and geographies of old and new media." This I believe was a driving force behind the convergence culture as a whole. As the World Wide Web became more available and the everyday consumer learned to navigate this new source of information, the world became much smaller. As stated in the text, the three hour time difference between the East and West Coast in the United States became a window of opportunity for information to leak before it was supposed to in other time zones. Thus the concept of spoiler was born. The Internet's ease of use and overwhelming availability of information forced media producers to rethink their approach to content and play catch up to early adopters who found a new hobby of investigating industry secrets.
• Pierre Levy believed knowledge communities could restore true democratic citizenship as evident by the popular Survivor Sucks online community that collectively disseminated information and came to its conclusions. Hundreds and thousands of consumers formed global villages to vote and rule out insider information, and no one voice was louder than the other. Unfortunately, the elitist brain trusts formed within the knowledge community and began to only share what information they deemed was necessary and once again restored hierarchy to the newly formed knowledge culture. The brain trust closely resembles military factions and government.
• The third key point that stood out to me was the question: "Was spoiling a goal or a process?" I immediately thought of the definition of convergence when I read that question. The question resembled the concept of convergence being a process and not an end point. Is the merging of digital media and individual transition by industry or a collaborative effort by all media to survive and evolve? As we read in our week two readings, although it began as an individual process, it has become a collaborative effort and thus the concept of media convergence has arrived.

The most difficult concept for me to swallow was related to an aforementioned key point. Levy suggests that his model of collective intelligence is an "achievable utopia" and through small intimate experiences we'll learn to live within knowledge communities. That's a strong concept to suggest that only working collectively will bring about the ideal state of living. Although I agree that teamwork is much needed in our society, I'm reluctant to believe that it's the only way to bring about an ideal state of living, a utopia. Is the only way to achieve world peace through sharing our knowledge? I'm not convinced that this will produce heaven on earth.

The concept of playing is a one of the ways we learn hit a direct nerve for me and I can relate it to my everyday life. The preschool I direct engages our children through a curriculum called Creative Curriculum. Essentially it is built upon the precept that children ultimately learn through playing. It was refreshing to see that model being applied to adult learning as well and I definitely have personally seen the value in these concepts of reskilling and reorientation.

So as I conclude my thoughts for the week I'd like to leave you with a few thoughts to ponder. Is collective intelligence the way to achieve an ideal state of living? Will a hierarchy or gated knowledge community always emerge within a seemingly content culture? Is the collective participatory nature of any group enough to hold it together?