A Brief History of Collective Intelligence
Image courtesy of Stefan Stefancik (via Unsplash)
Collective Intelligence is an output of successful collaboration, and helps us generate better insights, make better predictions and to coordinate action at scale. However collective intelligence is not a given and frequently does not occur, unless we are able to successfully integrate different perspectives and data.
One way to better understand what collective intelligence is, is to see how it has evolved as a result of new communication tools. As Yuval Harari describes in his book Sapiens, large scale human cooperation is basically our superpower as a species, and as we became better at it we became the most successful (or dangerous) species on Earth.
Hunting together
Our collective intelligence can be traced back to cave paintings where simple concepts (such as hunting) could be explained to others. This allowed groups to better coordinate their actions and achieve a higher success rate in hunting. In other words there was someone who thought that if everybody would understand the plan, we would be better off, and so organised the first “All Hands Meeting”. We still use this method to this day, but in the form of post-its and whiteboards.
Those of us who took the initiative to figure out how to align the action of a group of people, and to build better teams, are extremely important and essential in designing collective intelligence.
Deer hunting scene from the Cavalls Shelter, Valltorta, Spain
Communicating at scale
Which brings us to the next phase of collective intelligence, which was accelerated further through the written word. This new tool just made communication so much easier and expanded the geographical and time horizon of our ability to coordinate as a species enormously. Being able to share information, process this information collectively, and make sense of it to make decisions, is the essence of collective intelligence.
In the 15th century, writing was a privilege of the elite. With the invention of the printing press, communication was revolutionized and democratised and knowledge was made available to many more people.
Writing and printing were crucial as the size of the teams and tribes continued to grow rapidly. Yet a new problem emerged, namely “Who’s the boss around here, as I have contradicting information about this topic?”.
Impressio Librorum c. 1580–1605, engraving by Theodoor Galle
Global storytelling
This new challenge brings us back to the people who were taking initiatives to coordinate the actions of a group. What were their motivations? How were they chosen, and what happened if s/he made mistakes? One way to tackle these coordination challenges was through sharing of common narratives or stories. These have been passed down from generation to generation and shine like a north star and help us to collectively coordinate our actions. These stories were written and told by chiefs of tribes, and by kings and queens. And storytelling (as well as propaganda) is still a very powerful tool by governments and dictators, by scientists and celebrities and by the top 1% of our species.
Whilst experiencing a cacophony of different stories, some people questioned whether there really is a common narrative that everybody believes in. Is there maybe another story that unites us but nobody speaks about? We see the emergence of new groups and their “global” stories throughout history - from cybernetics to communism from hippies to democrats. All of them are looking for a story that guides our behaviour. And all of these show us that collective intelligence emerges through the interplay between people, and the tools that they have used to communicate with each other.
Co-evolving together
So why is there renewed interest around collective intelligence now given that it is something we used in different forms for so long? It is because of the current information revolution where our communication tools to harness collective intelligence have shifted to the next level.
“Collective intelligence is humans, all living systems and machines co-evolving together.”
With the latest developments in technology, from artificial intelligence and machine learning there has never been a time when we were able to communicate with so many people, to produce, process and share so much information and coordinate the actions of such large groups of people. This gives a huge power and potential to discover a new, global story that is shared by all of us.
