Web 2.0-Pt1: Harnessing collective intelligence

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Web 2.0 applications and platforms harness the power of collective intelligence. In simple terms collective intelligence in the the social networking scale depicts the expression of opinions, standards, or discussion based on experiences, study, knowledge or simply intelligence of a group of people. To my understanding this is what collective intelligence would mean in simplest of terms. Collective intelligence may be utilized in many forms, however the purpose for which this intelligence may be used will be the focus of my discussion here. According to Tim O Reilly and John Battelle (2009) "Collective intelligence applications depend on managing, understanding, and responding to massive amounts of user-generated data in real time" therefore this gives a brief insight about the feasibility of collective intelligence. http://www.web2summit.com/web2009/public/schedule/detail/10194

An excellent application for bringing about a positive change of this collective intelligence would be utilization of blogs for philanthropy. Kiva utilizes this initiative by raising funds through peer to peer charities. An american not-for-profit organization also tapped into this potential and started a trend of international peer-peer lending phenomenon. This helped raise awareness of helping fellow people around the world. Zidisha also facilitates direct communication between borrowers and lenders to establish a sense of security and belonging between people of the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0#Web_2.0_and_philanthropy

Collective intelligence not only forms the essence of blogs, social networks or any other web 2.0 platforms, but forms the source of technologies such as search engines and how they churn out results to everyday users. Crawlers used by search engines are used by search engines to work with key words and establish page ranking systems.The collective intelligence of keywords, database systems, web development methods, HTML coding, crawler design and page ranking methodologies together form the "collective intelligence of search engines" that give the results most appropriate to what users are looking for. These form the "neural networks of search engines" http://www.oreilly.de/catalog/9780596529321/chapter/ch04.pdf


Certain legal and ethical issues may be raised when collective intelligence platforms are utilized. Legal issues include illegal transfer of funds, tracking of funds, returns, and economical discrepancies. Not-for-profit organizations may be set up by scammers to cheat people out of their money, and if relevant security measures are not in place, this has a chance of collapsing. These are the some of the legal and ethical issues that may be raised by harnessing the power of collective intelligence for philanthropy purposes. However with appropriate collaboration with governments, banks, and security measures in place, this initiative may bring about a positive impact in today's hi-tech society.

With increase in security measures, education, increase in use of internet, cheaper options to get connected to the internet and the web revolution accepting web 2.0 platforms, bringing about a positive change in the world through collective intelligence would serve the true purpose of advances in technology. This would mainly include betterment of humanity and bringing about positive change in society.