Launch of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence

I think this is an interesting development in the world of networked learning. Although I don't like the corporate slant to the applications of research, perhaps we could have some influence on directing part of the energy of the center to education.

While people have talked about collective intelligence for decades, new communication technologies—especially the Internet—now allow huge numbers of people all over the planet to work together in new ways. The recent successes of systems like Google and Wikipedia suggest that the time is now ripe for many more such systems, and the goal of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence is to understand how to take advantage of these possibilities.

Our basic research question is: How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?'

The Center for Collective Intelligence brings together faculty from across MIT to conduct research on how new communications technologies are changing they way people work together.

MIT Center for Collective Intelligence Launch Video (Requires RealPlayer 8.0+)