Collaboration and Collective Intelligence

In this MIT lecture, many topics are covered such as: the commercialization of social media, collective intelligence in Second Life, and the power of Collective Imagination in children's media, such as Pokemon.

In the case of commercialization of social media, I learned that end-users are a captive audience. There are little to no exit-strategies that users can partake in. To leave a social network, like Facebook, would mean leaving your friends and networks behind. I am a Facebook user myself, and have often questioned the different things that the platform does with user content. There have been numerous times that I have disagreed with their practice and changes to the interface. One of the biggest objections I had to Facebook, was the addition of Facebook Ads. I believe that this is what Trebor Scholz was referring to in this lecture. Since there is great cost to maintaining a site like Facebook, there ultimately has to be some way to pay for it. Unfortunately, even though it is thought to pay the bills, companies like Facebook and MySpace that have chosen to profit off of their users. Trebor argues for a non-profit platform where users have genuine control over their content.

Second Life is a fascinating tool that can be used for collaboration and socialization. There are very many things that are built in the world, entirely by users or corporations, and often collaboratively. In the video, Cory Ondrejka mentioned an example of how Starwood collaborated with users who were interacting with Starwood group's hotel, which was built in Second Life. Starwood listened to users' feedback, and made changes to it's real-life model.

Collective imagination is why Pokemon became so popular and successful. Since there are so many different characters, with different personality types, players have an easy time of telling stories about their Pokemon and building relationships upon that. Collective imagination has less to do with collaboration, but in some way, it is a form of collaboration within a social network about a pre-defined characters with stories and personalities behind them. There is a Pokemon game series that even builds upon the stories behind the monsters, called Mystery Dungeon. It would not be farfetched to find Pokemon fans making up their own stories about their favorite characters.



Personal note:
I believe that Pokemon is not just for children, but for all ages. It is generally believed by mainstream media that Pokemon is generally a childrens' game. However, there are many layers of complexity to it, and the games can be enjoyed by all ages. This is why I refer to stories about Pokemon as "players stories," because anyone of any age could tell a story if they wanted to.