MIT launches Center for Collective Intelligence

MIT announced the launch of its new MIT launches Center for Collective Intelligence. The goal of the Center is:

[t]o understand how to harness the power of large numbers of people—connected together through Internet and other technologies —to better solve a range of business, scientific, and societal problems

I think that is a fantastic idea. The real question is do they have anything more than the observation that Wikipedia is really great and wiki technology could be used for more and other things? Well, there are a few things they have which could be much better:

Maybe I am being obtuse here, but Wikipedia is more than wiki software, and even more than a community of contributors. Wikipedia has worked out over an extensive period of time what its goals are (namely to be an encyclopedia) and what that actually means. The FAQs on style, neutral point of view (NPOV), as well as the ongoing software development have all contributed to ongoing collaboration. What I see here is starting off on the wrong foot. Why not learn from Wikipedia and at least scaffoled the experience so there is little to no learning curve on the technology? Ok, enough of my whining.

I really wish MIT the best on this, and look forward to seeing it succeed. I will contribute what I can, as soon as I figure out what that is.

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October 13, 2006 • Posted in: opensource, wiki

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