The folks at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence think they have a better way to organize the creation and consumption of content around complex topics such as global warming. Their new Collaboratorium project aims to fix what they perceive as wrong with current Web collaboration tools such as forums, blogs, emails, IM, and wikis.
It is one thing to create a tool and to throw it out into cyberspace. It is another to get people to use it. As I listened to the video, I asked myself, is the Collaboratorium a place I would choose, to write, comment, and read about climate change solutions? My response is mixed. While I share some of Dr. Klein’s frustrations with the status quo, I am not sure I agree with his solution.
One of the beauty of blogging is the immediacy and creativity that comes with it. Same with wikis. It is precisely because of their loose and imperfect nature, that these tools are so effective. One understandable reaction to such haphazard creation, is a need to control the process. This brings up an interesting tension, that may be best resolved with the offering of a broader range of tools, including other structured collaborative sites besides Wikipedia. Whether Collaboratorium fills that void, only the future will tell . . .
I am curious to hear your thoughts!
Related story: Climate and the web electronic democracy on steroids
La Marguerite 
I quickly glanced through a paper for this plan a few months ago. When I saw the headline, with “MIT”, “collective intelligence” and “global warming” in it back then, I thought “wow, finally people who understand.”
But I was really disappointed because of their highly structured approach. I don’t believe there is much structure needed.
They’re right about the fact that information organized by time, e.g. logged conversations as can be done with blogs, is not sufficient. However, they misrepresent wikis in this case. A defining aspect of a wiki is that information is organized by topic. Wikis provide enough structure.
Also, there are many high quality wiki platforms, especially Mediawiki (as used by Wikipedia).
What we need is not better technology, the technology is there, many times over. We need instead many people who know that a “collective intelligence” project is under way, and who are willing to contribute their time to this. It’s about engagement. The way the project is presented to the people is what matters.
We need a Wikipedia or Linux for a model for a sustainable society, sustainable public sector, sustainable business, and sustainable lifestyle. But Linux and Wikipedia are not defined by their underlying technology: Both use plain text as basis.
Wikipedia and Linux are what they are because of their loyal contributors, funding, and in case of Linux the leadership of Torvalds.
The approach by MIT is obviously well-intended, but tries to solve a problem which isn’t there.
I can highly recommend “The Success of Open Source” by Steven Weber if you want to learn about such collective efforts.
The video does contain some nice thoughts, but anyone who has done a little reading on wikipedia, open source and online communities know this already.
On a side note: I’ve been a software engineer for some years, and software engineers tend to equate the “system” with the software, while in fact the system is much, much bigger than the software. If a system is not working, a software engineer would think the software is not good enough, instead of thinking about the behavior of the people who are using it.
The same with people in the “Law and Economics” field. They think failure in society is too blame on bad laws. Invent better laws, and the problem would go away. They totally brush over the human side.
But you can’t blame them. It’s their training. It masks their eyes.
Maybe we should invite someone from MIT overhere. 🙂
Dear LaMarguerite,
Who knows what will work. It is beyond me. But I would like to ask you, Meryn and members of the MIT Collabortorium a question.
Do you think the time will ever come when government officials stop employing every ruse under the sun to protect the selfish interests of over-consumers and hoarders, and start by choosing to do the right thing?
Life and human institutions like national economies are utterly dependent upon the Earth for existence; but too many of our leaders view the Earth as some kind of thing to be manipulated, dissipated, and ravaged secondary to their adamant practice of a religion called endless economic growth. The clear and obvious object of their idolatry is the soon to become unsustainable expansion of the leviathan-like, global political economy. What a colossal sham. What a shame. What a shambles for our children to confront.
Always, with thanks for considering my question,
Steve
Thanks Meryn. I concur. Engagement is key. Technology can only go so far. Ultimately it boils down to people wanting to participate, and relate, and have conversations with each other. Also there are already organizing tools in place, such as in Wikipedia, and Digg, and del.icio.us, for instance.
Steve, thanks for asking the question. Embedded in your question is a chicken and egg problem. Today for instance I was struck by the New York Times article on the candidates and gas prices. It seems that Hillary Clinton is choosing a populist approach, that is sure to appeal to the crowds. Barack Obama, on the other hand is advocating a more sound solution at least from an environmental perspective. Guess what? The one most likely to rally the people here is not going to be Obama. This despite the fact, that he is acting in the better interest of the people. Crowds are wise. They can also be very very dumb.
“Do you think the time will ever come when government officials stop employing every ruse under the sun to protect the selfish interests of over-consumers and hoarders, and start by choosing to do the right thing?”
I believe that time will be when a majority or near-majority of the electorate won’t be “over-consumers and hoarders” with “selfish interests”, which is about… now. I think you’re misrepresenting the people of the USA here. They’re just people like you and me, trying to find some happiness in life. In light of their current financial problems, they might not even be able to handle the thought of a systemic problem in society.
I can honestly tell you: I wouldn’t be thinking of global warming, resource depletion or social justice if I didn’t feel financially secure.
I suggest you read Breakthrough by Nordhaus and Shellenberger.
Steve, read this piece by Dave Pollard:
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2008/04/29.html#a2141
My thoughts on this . . .
1. If the folks at MIT are aiming to achieve “collective intelligence”, they have a very long way to go according to Thomas Friedman’s piece in The New York Times today, titled “Dumb as We Wanna Be”. Nevertheless, the aim is vital and worthwhile.
2. “Thank God” for MIT, at least in some important senses.
3. I think the blog approach and the MIT thing are probably best at doing different, but complementary, things. In other words, they each have advantages in addressing different parts of the problem. For reasons MIT mentions, their tool is probably a better, cleaner, more powerful problem-solving tool when it comes to very complex and interrelated issues that would otherwise suffer from “noise” and disorganization. But, a blog approach (especially in a great blog, such as La Marguerite) creates a more personal environment that appeals to more people, especially those who would find the MIT approach un-personal (if it is), and perhaps lends itself to a better focus on personalizing solutions, finding moral support, and being part of a group as one tries to make this not-so-easy journey. Put another way, the MIT tool (if lots of people use it) might well be a better overall “problem-solving” analysis tool, whereas individual blogs might well be better places to “communicate, encourage, and apply positive change in real social environments.” I see them as different, but complementary.
4. If all this is roughly correct, the answer is fairly simple: If Marguerite keeps fully up-to-speed on the issues, pros/cons, and best solutions that may come out of the MIT thing, 24-7, and then if she posts daily, and eloquently, on those insights here, for our commentary, individual consideration, dialogue, and for reasons of social change, then we’ll have the best of both worlds. All this would take is a lot of caffeine, for Marguerite.
In short, I think both approaches are great. They probably are best at playing different but complementary roles, and they probably have different appeals to different folks.
All I can say is, I hope the MIT thing has a big “analyze and critique ExxonMobil” branch. That is, at least until ExxonMobil changes in substantial and responsible ways. Then, at that point, that branch could be renamed the “celebrate ExxonMobil’s courage and creativity” branch. But, that will require some substantial change, of course.
I think that the object of the exercise is to attempt to be objective. Something which often fails to occur in blogs and replies. Its the same repetitive comments which occur that don’t add to the thread (Jeff’s ExxonMobil comment is a good example).
The MIT Collaboratorium is an interesting concept and has real potential in developing policy ideas through consultation. It has weaknesses in terms of debating an issue but given that being right is more important for people generally, the merits of debate (especially in blogs) is oversold.
The Collaboratorium attempts to create an environment that requires people into a less egotistical intellectual space. However, this requires disciplined moderators who are committed to the structure above their personal opinions. Until there has been a sufficient testing period, the jury is out as to the effectiveness of the Collaboratorium.
Thanks John. You are very right about people getting attached to ideas, and sometimes loosing track of the thread in the process. I guess this is a normal human tendency, especially when one gets passionate about something.
Dear Ms. Marguerite and all participants in this Salon,
If any of y’all would care to engage in a thought experiment that may be a bit heavy (or preferably, a bit light) on our imaginations, then I’m delighted to offer this half-baked idea that I’m eager to share.
(BTW, I can’t envision doing something like this on my own, so kindly feel free to run with this idea I’m developing here and if it feels good and makes sense to you, then please play with it!)
Let’s envision MIT’s Collaboratorium endeavor successfully evolving at least for the near future.
Over the next several weeks, I believe, We could conceivably collaborate with the Collaboratorium on presenting a little bit more than just an idea (I’m hesitating to call it a ‘good’ idea until I flesh it out some more and gain your feedback).
So here goes = this July, in France, a handful of our fellow species-members will be interacting with one another in circumstances where global energy/climate-related subjects will be explored. I’m sure some of these folks will be quite enthusiastic about welcoming good, professionally prepared and presented insights on those subjects.
It just so happens that each of these several, individual human beings will be a participant in the upcoming G8 summer session. Independent of my/your opinion of their demonstrated competence (or lack thereof) re: effectively addressing our global climate/energy crises, they’re (each and everyone of them) still members of our species = people.
I believe that the apparent influence these people are currently wielding combined with the need for good intelligence that their responsibilities demand is such that we ought to consider nurturing and releasing a few good memes into the public sphere along the following lines:
* Open research endeavors focused on best-practices in green, global diplomacy.
* Participants in upcoming G8 summer session are secondary clients of these research endeavors. (Since the research processes as well as the research results happen in the public domain, the primary clients are all of humanity including future generations. Given the inherent challenges involved in conducting interactions with our primary clients, our work products will benefit from being more focused via their delivery to several key people within several weeks.)
There are numerous dimensions of this idea with which I’m still struggling, so I’ll simply highlight a few now and elaborate some more later on.
Let’s consider:
* Encouraging an approach that’s blame-free.
(aiming for this ideal opens up new possibilities)
* Mr. Redford’s image of life on Earth as a miracle.
(opening remarks in clip posted on this blog on Earth Day)
* Mr. Gore’s plea to meet a challenge that’s worthy of our best efforts.
(recent TED presentation at about 20:17 on YouTube timer)
* Mr. Bush’s faith in American ingenuity as a resource.
(closing remarks in his 4.16.08 Rose Garden speech)
* Mr. Shirky’s mention of love in a most practical sense.
(pages 141 & 142 in “Here Comes Everybody”)
Let’s consider teaming-up to collaborate with the good folks @cci.mit.edu to present such an idea as this one = design and deliver research services on best-practices in the field of green, global diplomacy to any/all G8 participants at their upcoming summer session.
I’d love to get your feedback on this half-baked idea and I look forward to the possibility of at least having fun furthering this thought experiment simply to see where it may go …
In the meantime, here’s a haiku that I trust you’ll enjoy:
***************
Appreciating
life as a gift, is a gift.
Open your presence!
***************
Ciao for now,
paul
P. S. – Here’s a link re: “best practices”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_practices
P. P. S. – No surprise that I couldn’t find much on the field of “green. global diplomacy” = perhaps we could start a Wikipedia page in several weeks.
Thanks Paul, for your contribution. My understanding is the Collaboratorium is still in testing stage, and is not yet open to the public. The following link gives more information on current test results:
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2008/spring/06/
I like your idea of blame-free politics. I encourage you to broadcast the concept throughout the blogosphere. So far, much attention has been paid to the content of international climate negotiations, and not enough, in my opinion, on the process itself. Your idea of best practices in green diplomacy is one you should pursue. Maybe you can propose as a topic for some of the tests taking place with the Collaboratorium project. Why not contact Mark Klein directly?
Maybe some of the people here at La Marguerite would be interested in collaborating with you in formulating a proposal?
My Dear Ms. Marguerite,
I’m feeling quite grateful for your encouraging suggestions and now reporting back to you re: the homework/play I’ve been up to since reading your response.
Your understanding’s accurate re: Collaboratorium’s “still in testing stage” = confirmed by an email exchange I had with Mark, yesterday.
I’m so glad my emphasis on a blame-free approach seems to resonate for you.
BTW – I’m much more interested in a blame-free approach to public discourse in general than merely “politics”, per se.
At the risk of appearing excessively jaded/cynical, I ought to inform you that I believe “politics” as popularly practiced today may be beyond hope because it’s too far out of touch with the genuine service the general public actually needs.
Besides, in what other profession, could one verbally insult fellow professionals by labeling their behavior with the very same word used to define that profession. It’d never happen with a butcher, a baker or a candlestick-maker and yet politicians often aim to disparage one another by claiming ‘so-and-so is just engaging in politics’.
That being said, I realize the secondary clients in my half-baked idea are all professional politicians and I thus realize the subject of politics is unavoidable. I’d just rather approach such clients as fellow human beings who happen to be politicians instead of the other way around. Call me naive, it’s simply a matter of the former approach appeals to me as holding much more promise than the latter.
I took your advice and posted the concept on Cliff Figallo’s blog:
http://presilience.org/2008/04/25/designing-an-online-platform-for-collaboration/#comments
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Cliff’s pResilience blog ain’t gettin’ much traffic. If he’s too far ahead of the curve, we humans have much more catching up to do than with current reality-checks.
In addition to initiating contact with Mark at the collaboratorium, I sent him a follow-up message in which I elaborated on the concept (my wild & half-baked idea). Here’s an excerpt from that message that includes a bit more on some of the value I believe can emerge from a blame-free approach:
*******
Given the upcoming G8 session in France this July, why not aim to deliver/offer best-in-class, state-of-the-art data, information, knowledge, intelligence, etc., (e. g., along the lines of best-practices research) on emergent subjects like green global diplomacy and sustainable governance?
I, for one, am quite interested in encouraging an approach that’s blame-free.
Although such an approach may be impossible to implement completely, simply striving in the direction of such an ideal requires its participants to meet extraordinary challenges that are well worth the effort.
I believe any participants choosing to meet such challenges better enable themselves/ourselves to perceive new possibilities that otherwise remain obscured in our too-often blame-laden public sphere.
I trust you catch my drift since you’re emphasizing the construction (adding value) rather than the destruction (subtracting value) of good ideas via The Collaboratorium’s “argument mapping” design.
Anyhow, kindly help yourself and feel free to play with this idea/topic if it feels good and makes sense in terms of your current evaluations. Given the time-sensitive nature of this idea/topic, please don’t feel obliged to include me in its potential utility to you; that’s if you choose to use it and especially if you think my participation would just slow you guys down.
If you choose to welcome my participation in The Collaboratorium sooner rather than later, then that’d be fine with me, too. If so, I’d like to reach out to some other folks for some good help = namely:
* Cliff Figallo for his common sense approach to moderating social discourse via emergent information technologies.
* Marguerite Manteau-Rao for her robust presence in the blogosphere and her focus on cultivating social learning.
* Andy Revkin for his extraordinary good work in attempting to help more people understand and prepare for the challenges we’re creating for ourselves in terms of our emergent global energy/climate crises.
*******
I trust my mention of your work is not too far off-target. Later in that same message to Mark, I mention the posts I made to the collaboratorium strands on pResilience, Dot Earth and here on La Marguerite.
I’d be grateful if you’d care to suggest any other blogs that might welcome my half-baked idea.
Also, I sent an email to the folks at “Common Current” after reading Mr. Karlenzig’s post on Dot Earth:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/looking-forward-an-energy-scramble-or-a-blueprint/#comment-28991
… and then checking out the “Common Current” site and discovering that ‘Lo and behold’, these folks deliver best-practices research (among other services) with a nice emphasis on sustainable governance. Nothing like the good old ‘incidence of coincidence’ to help make one’s day, wouldn’t you say?
Anyhow, if this baby starts gaining any traction then I’d be delighted to collaborate with the good folks who gather at this oasis known as La Marguerite … with your gracious permission, bien sur.
Keep up the great work/fun, Girl = your voice is both nourishing and refreshing.
Ciao for now,
paul
Thanks Paul. I will gladly continue to support your efforts. I do not know about the presilience blog, and I will check it out.
I wanted to respond to the point Meryn Stol made about wikis, which helped me clarify my thinking. It’s true: wikis are organized topically, one article per topic. But: wiki articles by their nature capture consensus, and thus often fare poorly with controversial topics:
• Producing “least-common-denominator” content
• often as a result of wasteful “edit wars”
• where the controversial core of the deliberation is moved to massive “talk pages”, which are time-centric
• and thus prone to the same limitations as other deliberation-support technologies
I’ve been doing a comparative evaluation, in Zurich, where 300 students are using wikis forums and argumentation tools (100 users each) to deliberate about a complex topic (bio-fuels) and it seems to be playing out that way. I’ll have more to say after I do the analysis.
Thanks Mark, for joining our discussion. And for the update.
I am impressed with the way you are breathing life into the Collaboratorium, and have made the development process an integral part of the tool itself. This is exciting. I am glad this site can be of help in refining your thinking.
Please do not hesitate to use this blog community as another testing venue.
Just mailed him this:
i Mark,
Good to hear you’ve got some knowledge about social media.
The reason why I asked this is that I’ve changed my position somewhat.
Although I do believe complex deliberation *could* be done with a tool
like mediawiki (the wikipedia has found ways to deal with complex
factual topics like global warming and homosexuality), it seems very
likely to me that *some* structure added to the default blank slate
could be conductive to the process.
Have you ever heard of the expression “paving the cowpaths”?
I think it would be good to study how actual online deliberation is
done right now, for example in open source projects like Linux, and of
course Wikipedia. How do they talk? Where do they talk? How is any
progress shared with others? Are there small groups forming around an
issue, effectively taking ownership, or does the process keep being
open for input from any side? If there are small groups forming, is
this because of social factors (for example: not everyone can know
everything about everything) or is it sometimes due to true
scalability problems?
In this way, you’re looking at the deliberation process in a whole…
Large scale deliberation exists, with or without collaboratorium., but
if collaboratorium could truly “pave the cowpaths”, and thus make it
very easy and intuitive to follow “best practices” extracted from
current deliberation practice, Collaboratorium could certainly make a
huge improvement to our collective intelligence.
On the other hand, if collaboratorium would fail to accommodate to
common deliberation practices already in use, people will shun it, and
instead switch to a more low-tech option. The current offerings in
social media (blogs, wikis, forums, twitter, im, social bookmarking,
tagging, etc) could certainly be enough for a devoted community to
deliberate online without a specifically designed deliberation tool.
Restrict a community too much, and they’ll choose some other route.
This also raises the point that I think it would be important to know
how Collaboratorium would fit in the existing social media ecosystem.
How does it relate to each tool? Could there be benefits of
integrating with them through their respective api’s? Could you
leverage already existing data in these systems?
For one thing, I hope that collaboratorum won’t be designed like a
monolithic facebook, one big application framework where everyone
should code to. I’d rather see it as a very open database, rss/atom
feeds everywhere, etc.
One thing I stressed in my earlier comment was the need to engaged
public, that is, a sufficiently large and knowledgeable group of
people. If these people doesn’t come together, the tool might be very
well perfect, but it still won’t matter. A well marketed wiki could
win purely on network effects.
For illustration: I’ve just taken a look at Deki Wiki from Mindtouch,
recently selected by no less than Mozilla to power their developer
community. See http://del.icio.us/meryn/mindtouch . Who knows how much
better Wikipedia could be when it was initially powered by Mindtouch
instead of Mediawiki… Let’s assume Mindtouch is much better. Do you
think a project competing with Wikipedia would ever get off the
ground?
I said more or less that “MIT is solving the wrong problem” with
trying to improve the tools, instead of looking to engage people. This
was false for two reasons:
1) Improving the available tooling isn’t bad. It will surely help, if
done right. And I don’t think you’re stupid.
2) you are in fact working on engaging knowledgeable people with trial
runs in universities. In fact, I believe MIT has considerable
marketing power to reach just the right group of people: scientists,
scholars, tech entrepreneurs, and the like. Just the name will do
wonders. It has done for me.
These two points also explain my initial excitement about your project.
Now I think of it, there’s another good side of your project. Just the
newness of the technology might entice people to try it out. If they’d
see mediawiki in front of them, it wouldn’t make them eager to enter
some information. They’ve probably done that sometime already. This
could provide much needed initial momentum, and enduring “pushes” from
constantly appearing newcomers.
As I’ve said in an earlier comment: I’ve been a software engineer, and
I still have a love for new technology. However, I’m nowadays not so
much focussed on the newness of technology, but more on the newness of
social practice. If they come together, it’s perfect, but given the
current state of the world, we should really be focussing on new
social practices, e.g. getting a worldwide constructive debate of the
ground. I hope this goal will remain the focus of our future
communication.
I hope to hear from you soon. I’m ok with “point by point” rebuttals,
if you feel like it. I’m probably wrong on all kind of things. 😉
Please keep in mind that I’m living in The Netherlands (GMT+2 right
now) so I won’t always be able to respond within a day.
Best regards,
Meryn
[…] Third, you may be interested in Mark Klein’s Collaboratorium initiative at MIT, regarding new ways to structure blogging discussions, so that they become more productive. For more on this, I invite you to read post I wrote a while ago, including discussion with Mark Klein’s comment towards end of the thread: https://lamarguerite.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/mit-collaboratorium-wants-to-organize-the-climate-chang… […]
I really like Meryn’s comments. Meryn, did you get a response from Mark on your email (your last post)?
Re Mark’s comments:
“wiki articles by their nature capture consensus, and thus often fare poorly with controversial topics:
• Producing “least-common-denominator” content
• often as a result of wasteful “edit wars”
• where the controversial core of the deliberation is moved to massive “talk pages”, which are time-centric”
This is true of Wikipedia – but Wikipedia is about building an encyclopedia, *not* about analysis and ideas.
I don’t know of many major efforts to explore these things in a wiki. We’re doing a bit of it at Appropedia.org which allows for analysis and ideas, but these aspects of the site have not taken off the way the project-sharing and topical information has. Issuepedia is another one, which is still mainly one person.
Somehow wikis have not grabbed people’s imaginations in the same way for analysis as for encyclopedic content.
Considering wikis have grown so much by virtue of their openness, I’m not sure the answer is to add heavier moderation and more structure. I’m also a fan of the flexibility of wikis.
Tools for adding structure have emerged within wikis – infoboxes, for example, and Semantic MediaWiki. Like Meryn, I’m wondering whether there’s a way of exploring the use of such cowpaths – adapting some to debate and analysis, and seeing how they get adapted and used in a community.
[…] to contribute to a collaborative platform. I started sharing some of my reasons in previous posts, here and here. In a […]
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