Collective Intelligence: A Dialogue With Thomas W. Malone

Collective Intelligence: A Dialogue With Thomas W. Malone

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As all the people and computers on our planet get more and more closely connected, it’s becoming increasingly useful to think of all the people and computers on the planet as a kind of global brain.

It’s important to realize that intelligence is not just something that happens inside individual brains. It also arises with groups of individuals. In fact, one definition of collective intelligence is groups of individuals acting collectively in ways that seem intelligent. By that definition, of course, collective intelligence has been around for a very long time. Families, companies, countries, and armies: those are all examples of groups of people working together in ways that at least sometimes seem intelligent.