Hopper Analytical - Community

Collective Intelligence Book Arrives

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:40:45 -0400

Today, the book Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace arrived on my doorstep. I am fortunate enough to be a contributing author. My chapter is entitled Empowering Individuals Towards Collective Online Production, and focuses on the paradoxical notion of the importance of individual motivation in effective online collaboration. Works from several of my personal heroes appear in this compendium, including Yochai Benkler, Doug Engelbart, Pierre Levy, Thomas Malone, Howard Rheingold, and David Weinberger. I simultaneously feel incredibly fortunate and remarkably unworthy of sharing a book jacket with the likes of these folks, but here it is.

Online Participation Headed Towards Democratic Utopia or Civic Demise?

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:59:06 -0400

On Thursday, the MIT Center for Future Civic Media as part of the MIT Communications Forum and Civic Media Series hosted a talk between Yochai Benkler and Cass Sunstein, moderated by Henry Jenkins and entitled "Our World Digitized: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly." The premise, of which I was skeptical, was to get Cass and Yochai to duke it out over whether internet participation was headed anywhere good. I was dubious of MIT staging a scholarly drama, but Benkler, Sunstein, and Jenkins have written three of the (arguably) most important recent works on the participatory internet, and for that fact alone, attendance was mandatory.

Many great arguments were articulated, all of which can be heard here. To nutshell it, Sunstein stayed true to his books stating that pervasive individual self-selection on the internet is leading to insulation and a lack of diversity. He paraded out the tired old The Daily Me argument and the so-called echo chamber effect. He suggests that democracy itself is at risk, as it requires diverse input, the exchange of unshared knowledge, and serendipitous encounters to function effectively.

Benkler refused to outright disagree with Sunstein, but instead focused on the positive effect of empowering individuals to participate online. He argued that individuals who perceive they can influence society's agenda become more engaged in civic discourse and behave more responsibly in this context. I took this to mean that individuals who feel they can make a difference are more likely to be engaged (vs. detached), develop meaningful arguments (vs. complain), and try to make a productive difference (vs. passivity).

While I agree with Sunstein's desire for diversity and serendipity and with Benkler's excitement over individual feelings of empowerment, I was disappointed that neither questioned the tired and quaint notion of the web being nothing more than a series of echo chambers. I wonder if either looks outside their inboxes to see what's really going on. Here is where Jenkins should have jumped in and schooled them on growing participation across diverse online communities, the wildly serendipitous (if not downright chaotic) information exchange found on Twitter, and individual interest (and subsequent sharing) expanding outward across every category of long tail media and knowledge. I would go farther to argue that emerging social norms in online interactions encourage diverse information dissemenation and punish the types of insular behavior that Sunstein and Benkler seem to accept as universal.

Undoubtedly, there are specific examples where echo chambers do exist, and link analysis shows narrow patterns of interaction in, for example, select political blogs, but I would argue that the internet is just a wee bit more than link spam littering the bottom of inflammatory blog posts.

I live-twittered the event. Here are some selected Tweets
(These are not direct quotes but rather real-time paraphrasing what I took each speaker to mean. Greatness is theirs. Mistakes are mine):

Benkler: What happens instead of a few elite that can set the agenda, we now have 3 million who believe they can affect their society
Yochai suggests that traditional mass media is more polarizing (fox news, radio talk shows) than the web's perceived echo chamber effect
Sunstein: How much serendipity we embrace depends on what we're regularly exposed to
Show of hands: 3/4 of the Bartos Theater audience have edited Wikipedia
We need a new model for understanding human behavior that builds in imperfection to allow for the possibility of true collaboration
Benkler: If you feel you have the ability to influence the cultural agenda, your concerns migrate from complaints to considered positional arguments
Sunstein, in response to what web tools should come to be: Stimulate curiosity. Once curiosity is triggered, it is very hard to resist
Triggering participatory activity requires, in part, for individuals to feel their efforts are needed and wanted
1st order diversity = range within our group (different people); 2nd order diversity = range across groups (different groups)
Sunstein: 4 probs in deliberation: amplify individual bias, polarization, early words initiate cascade, shared knowledge crowds out unshared

Social Technology and the Future of News

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:54:57 -0400

Slides and links from my presentation at PRI's The World.

Subject: Social technology and emerging uses in news.
Date: 3/27/2008
Location: WGBH, Boston

Download Powerpoint presentation

Links:

Idea Engines

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:07:03 -0400

In a long anticipated move, idea submit & rate engines are finally catching some meme-like popularity. They're certainly easy to build. In a follow-up post, I will tear them to bits for the flaws they introduce and the assumptions we make around their utility.

They do poke at some interesting aspects of Collective Problem Solving. Here are three:

* IdeaStorm

* My Starbucks Idea

* Ubuntu Brainstorm

Making Experts: The Future of Audience Engagement

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:00:04 -0400

How might media organizations better engage their audiences online?

Over the past year, I teamed up with several public broadcasters to try and answer this question. We collected lessons while rolling out online participation software at NPR’s Car Talk, KQED, Oregon Public Broadcasting, PRI’s The World and a dozen others. We are learning that the future of media engagement goes beyond invitations for listener comments. The leading examples involve much higher expectations from the "audience"; specifically, their partnership in delivering on more collaborative projects.

Take WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show, who in late 2007 asked their listeners to share price inequities they found at local grocery stores. The results made national news, and not just for the novel use of crowdsourced journalism (turns out that the state regulates milk prices, and not everyone was playing by the rules). As the demand for richer and more compelling media experiences increase, you’ll likely see less "Come join the discussion" and more "Let’s solve a problem together".

Most important here is the word "together". What participants want is a team-oriented experience that is open, inclusive, and aims to produce valuable outcomes where they can benefit. While these co-directed endeavors can be challenging to conceive and manage, they can drive significantly more participation and yield real, lasting online value (they now have a nice map of beer prices across Manhattan). Successful initiatives give the opportunity for all to be involved, and for many to play the role of expert – whether as an authoritative voice, a creative problem-solver, a data gatherer, or even a tackler of basic tasks. The very best solutions have participants as co-creators, co-directors, and even co-owners of the produced results. In this more collaborative environment, the notion of "the audience" begins to dissolve.

These collaborative projects can involve varying levels of commitment from participants. The following list identifies a spectrum of media-driven initiatives, from those with the least individual involvement to the most.

Opinion & Preference – Extract localized knowledge and insight from your audience in the form of polls, aggregated estimates or prediction markets.

Basic Task Completion – Why not crowdsource a simple electronic task? Well, for starters, coming up with a compelling outcome and building a system to do it efficiently are two likely reasons not to. There are a few good examples of ones that seem to be working, although tying it effectively to media might be a different story.

Shared Experience – Collect narratives around unique themes. Inviting in stories effectively involves finding unexpected, yet invariably human common ground.

Unique Expertise – If you have a big enough audience, track down the needle in the haystack by seeking unique expertise. Proven ideas include troubleshooting car problems, soliciting peace corps volunteers, or getting hot tips on possible stories.

Research Data & Analysis – You don’t need rare skills to roll your sleeves and do some primary research or apply a critical eye. Audience members have proven their ability at spotting celebrities, measuring a city’s SUV density, and helping slog through the JFK files for conspiracy clues.

Creative Content – Accumulating creative submissions around a common theme is a time-tested method for getting media junkies engaged. Consider offering incentives and showcasing the best. Examples are endless: photos, top-10 lists, t-shirt ideas, show names, fan fiction, and full-on radio stations to name but a handful.

Ideas & Solutions – "Given enough eyeballs, all [problems] are shallow." Arguably the oldest crowdsourcing endeavor was the British government trying to solve the longitude problem. And since then, pumping your community for insights to address specific issues has inspired everything from the online suggestion box to trying to find a cure for Lou Gehrig’s disease.

True Collaboration – Bringing a community together, deploying varied skills over time in a dynamic and massively productive process is the holy grail for online participation. It's like applying the complexities of open source software development to the media industry. Three noble efforts in this regard include spurring organized community action, collaborative story coverage, and, of course, cataloging the World's knowledge.

What Motivates Online Social Participation?

Wed, 5 Mar 2008 11:02:36 -0500

Can the motivations that drive individual behavior towards online collaborative production be explained entirely by enlightened self-interest?

Clay Shirky Speaks about His New Book: "Here Comes Everybody"

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:38:17 -0500

I had the good fortune to hear Clay Shirky speak last night at Harvard Law School. The event was hosted by Harvard’s Berkman Center as a lead-up to their 10 year anniversary celebration. The event also coincided with the release of Clay’s new book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Clay spent the majority of the discussion outlining the book. He began by pointing out that the book is not necessarily targeted to just the folks in the room (various flavors of webophile), but rather to a wider and more generalized audience. His argument for this was that "the web is no longer a decoration on society, but a challenge to it," meaning that usage and adoption of the Internet has become ubiquitious and integrated into how we do things to the level that for many of us, the Internet has become "the dashboard for our lives". So, theoretically, the book should have more universal readership.

I attempted to Twitter the presentation. I tried to capture his sound bites and cogent points, but Clay is a veritable font of wisdom and one-liners. I ended up with a serious case of twitterrhea. Below is a slightly cleaned up transcript of my tweats over the course of about an hour. Shirky direct quotes are in quotes. Everything else that isn’t labeled as my own thoughts [Ed:] can be attributed to Clay Shirky.

From Clay Shirky website: "If I had to describe what I write about, it would be "systems where vested interests lose out to innovation."

Historically, media innovations that allow two way communications produce active groups. Broadcast technology... not so good at this.

If Clay had to boil the book down to one bullet point = "Group Action Just Got Easier"

"Groups get complex faster than they get large" [Ed: i.e. the network effect, Reed’s Law, etc.]

The Internet acts as a prosthetic for existing group activity.

New social tools on the Internet make group connections ridiculously easy to form

Email was an afterthought of the Internet

"Reply all" was the Internet's first social feature

Curiously, once the technology gets boring, the social effects get interesting [Ed: by this, he means once the technology gets out of the way, becomes commonplace, and slides beneath the radar of awkward attention, then it becomes integrated into how we function as social creatures and the most interesting social effects of a technology begin to emerge]

"Me First Collaboration" = social effects that emerge from self-serving behavior, e.g. del.icio.us lets me store my bookmarks, but ultimately becomes useful to all [Ed: Or Google extracting social relevance from individually created links]

The annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade is an example where amateur photographers leveraged ad hoc online sharing (via flickr)

HDR photography as an example of using a flickr group to accelerate innovation through a community of practice (what used to take 8 years for a technology/process to emerge from lead users to professional process to documented practice to trade magazines to amateurs to shared understanding now takes weeks)

"every URL is a latent community"

"Sharing + conversation leaves a residue of instruction"

A comparison of a Buffy discussion board moving to a new platform is like a hermit crab changing its shell

Sharing -> Conversation -> Collaboration -> Collective Action are things that require increasing amounts of synchronization of group action.

"Thinking is for doing" [Ed: by this, he means that the purpose for human thought is so that we can then take action; quote attributed to someone I’ve forgotten] => "Publishing is for acting"

"Flashmobs are the Flagpole sitting of 2003"

"Nothing says dictatorship like arresting people for eating ice cream"

Ridiculously easy group-forming improves sharing, conversation, collaboration, and collective action

Behavioral economics states that social behavior online is more than just enlightened self-interest, for example, see the ultimatum game and the self-defeating individual act of punishing defectors

Irrational individual behavior spent towards generating social cohesion cannot justifiably be explained away by enlightened self-interest

Social technology can be used for more than just good… case in point, YM magazine shutting down their discussion boards because pro-anorexic girls were swapping practical tips

What’s the future of investigative journalism and its impact on smaller cities that can’t afford newspapers who have historically played this role? "I don't yet see a way that blogs can create sustained observation that stops civic corruption"

There are no good examples of long-term collective action - institutionalization becomes a problem over time

What works with collective action right now [to stimulate participation and worldwide attention] are surprises... but they are a wasting asset

Where individuals change their behavior BECAUSE they're members of the group is the key definer of collective action

"Immersive games get us out of the hell of continuous partial attention"

Boston Fab Lab

Wed, 6 Feb 2008 18:40:32 -0500

A couple years ago, I wrote about Neil Gershenfeld’s cool MIT Fab Lab (fabrication laboratory). On Monday I was fortunate enough to join the Boston Dorkbot crew for a tour of the Boston Fab Lab. I’ve posted a photoset of a few machines. Pictured are three computer-controlled prototyping machines, including a room-sized router, a micro-milling machine, and a laser cutter. Missing from the photos is a sign/vinyl cutter, several non-computer-controlled tools, and a nicely-outfitted electronics workbench.

The mission of the fab lab is a noble one: to empower creative people to make things with the assumption that, well, we’re all creative. Exposing individuals to commercial prototyping machines encourages people to explore, learn and have a significantly wider range of choices – both in what we might envision and make, but also in how we view the world and imagine our role in its future.

Shifting Tolerance in a Hybrid Economy

Wed, 9 Jan 2008 15:34:45 -0500

In a neighborhood near my home, there is a school playground with an enormous three story chain link fence along one side – presumably as a barrier for errant basketballs. The fence is constructed inches away from an adjacent home. I thought to myself "that would suck - I would probably rather have broken windows than live behind that huge fence". Then I thought of all sorts of examples of aggressive organizational behavior in our society that is tolerated, even though their behavior could easily be perceived as unfair or intrusive. I'm not suggesting that all business behavior is universally tolerated, but rather that their fundamental commercial presence is often quietly accepted. For example, we forgive the school's fence because we deem urban play areas for children are worth the tradeoffs. We also forgive Apple's fierce closedness, Google's ads, and Nike's ubiquitous branding. What's most interesting to me, however, is that we don't have a single standard for what is tolerated. There are some interesting nuances here. For example, I doubt my neighborhood would have tolerated a condo developer building a fence like that, and ubiquitous branding around your religion’s holiday is generally frowned upon.

Looking carefully at our culture's relationship to commerce, every business in some way lives on an unspoken agreement by the community to tolerate an incursive aspect of its existence (I'm presupposing that of course businesses provide meaningful value to customers ahead of their potentially invasive aspects).

Now consider our emerging hybrid economy. An organization operating in this new hybrid economy sits between the commercial economy of financial transactions and the sharing economy that thrives on free and open distribution of value (think of sharing as found within Wikipedia and Open Source Software). Take Google - a business operating in the hybrid economy with, among other things, YouTube. They rely on people openly sharing video content while they generate revenue from the accumulated eyeballs.

The emerging hybrid economy now shines the spotlight more brightly on a business’s tolerated behavior. If people don't embrace all aspects of a business, individuals might not just stop buying their products, they might stop sharing, which is an altogether new and potentially more disastrous fate. Rejection of a business would mean defection from its associated shared commons – to the detriment of society, not just specific product consumers.

The obvious question becomes then, how do you construct a business that leverages a hybrid economy without poisoning the sharing and good will? Where can these businesses carve out a profit and advantage around commercial behavior that is culturally tolerated? What specific aspects of hybrid businesses are required to facilitate social tolerance?

How the Media is Embracing User Participation

Mon, 5 Feb 2007 09:35:26 -0500

This blog entry is Part 1 in a Multi-part series investigating the continued adoption of user participation by the media industry. Read Part 2.

Increasing explorations into online user participation by traditional media organizations is perhaps more revolutionary than the growing trend of participatory media itself. A year or two ago, inviting in the audience was akin to cavorting with the enemy. Media pundits were predicting the ultimate demise of traditional media at the hands of, well, everyone else. Dwindling audiences, widespread file-sharing, shrinking advertising revenues, and the rise of amateur content production and distribution seemed ominous, and the industry took protective action. Panicked responses ranged from corporate consolidation to highly visible copyright protection actions.

The new take might look a little different, and be more like what Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies at MIT, is calling a convergence culture. Much like when other disruptive communication technologies have been introduced historically, traditional content and channels will likely not disappear or be replaced, but rather will find their place, coexist, and even work in conjunction with newer methods. Jenkins calls this

"…a move from medium-specific content toward content that flows across multiple media channels, toward the increased interdependence of communications systems, toward multiple ways of accessing media content, and toward ever more complex relations between top-down corporate media and bottom-up participatory culture."

This translates into a strategy of "if you can’t beat them, join them" for traditional media organizations. The $1.6 Billion purchase of upstart YouTube along with a series of successful, (yet less-visible) participatory media efforts is triggering a reversal in the strategy of media producers and distribution channels towards embracing the use of the Internet rather than admonishing it. There is sudden recognition of the value in taking advantage of "free" user-generated content, highly engaged online audiences, and unexplored methods for fresh ideas to integrate across media.

As media organizations get cozy to the idea of audience involvement, there are some immediately recognized benefits. While these perceived benefits may be mildly misguided, they can provide the initial motivation to begin experimenting and better understanding the participatory media landscape.

Some initial realizations might include:

The web is a cheap distribution channel – this means that more people can consume our stuff, and more eyeballs are better, right?
This online audience seems to share stuff a lot. Thought of in the right way, that’s just free marketing. Let’s get viral!
The Internet as rolodex: someone out there might know more about this subject than we do (and maybe they’ll tell us).
Content production is woefully expensive. Let’s take the best audience content in exchange for a little fame (production quality may be lacking, but we’ll just blame that on them).
If we let them have a conversation, they’ll be more engaged. Increased engagement yields stronger brand-affinity and increased customer lifetime value. ROI!
If we don’t own the community, someone else will. Landgrab!
Maybe there’s a way to make money online. I know we tried before with our (fill in the blank) business model in the '90s, but there are new opportunities with this user participation stuff.
If we don’t control the conversation, they could start bad-mouthing us.

As media organizations gain experience working together with individuals, there is growing acceptance in getting beyond these perceived benefits. For example, successful engagement of online communities includes lowering corporate barriers, increasing transparency, and releasing control over the conversation. These learnings lead to different ways of interacting with online communities, and I will investigate these in part two of this essay: The Media’s Evolutionary Adoption of user participation.

The Historical Role of Trust in Human Interaction

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 12:05:59 -0400

The importance of trust has long been recognized as a key factor in ensuring effective online interactions. To date, the emphasis has been primarily on trust’s role in individual financial transactions. This is not surprising. Online commerce has been one of the key drivers of large-scale adoption of the Internet. Over the past ten years, ecommerce has developed a foothold in fits and starts as users come to accept the Internet as a safe place to transact. Adoption has occurred in part due to significant efforts by players such as Verisign, Epinions, and eBay to develop an infrastructure of trust (i.e. validity, security, and reputation).

As modern humans, we all participate to some degree in a market economy that supports the open exchange of goods and services. This economy has many features that we inherently assume are in place and functioning, such as agreement on the value of money, and the right to seek recourse for being cheated by a seller. These features are necessary for effective and seamless transactions to occur. Imagine the effort required for a buyer to develop a level of trust with a seller without these underlying structures to support trustworthy commerce; structures like consumer-protection laws, financial currencies, and the extension of credit. It is important to recognize that these structures have not always been in place. In fact, for the vast majority of human history, it is likely that commerce was transacted only between people who were quite familiar with one another. Without an underlying market infrastructure for trust, the transaction cost of interacting with strangers was probably too great.

On one hand, it pays to avoid those we don’t trust. On the other hand, an individual or group increases its chances of survival and comfort if it can transact with a wider range of individuals. For example, imagine early farmers with an abundance of crops. By being able to transact with others beyond their neighbors, they could ensure the receipt of food throughout the winter and other goods by which to live. Here we have a dilemma. If the cost of transacting with strangers is high, but the benefit of transacting with a wider range of individuals is also high, what do we do? The answer is that we must develop ways by which to rapidly assess the trustworthiness of others (and instill their trust in us). By reducing the cost associated with developing trustworthiness, we can increase the payoff of transacting with other trustworthy individuals. Since regulated commerce infrastructures did not exist throughout the majority of human development, humans have instead acquired highly sensitive and efficient methods for assessing and developing trust in others.

Imagine what transactions may have looked like for thousands of years before structured commercial markets. Exchanges took place where the value of goods and services was difficult to determine. These exchanges were probably separated in time by weeks and months (here’s some extra zebra meat… please remember me the next time you bag an antelope). Exchanges of information were probably just as important as exchanges of goods and services (don’t trust Dave, he won’t return the favor). These exchanges themselves are critical in developing trustworthiness, and we can begin to recognize the importance of communication – both overt and more subtle cues – towards developing trust and willingness to exchange, interact, and increase the mutual value inherent in doing so.

As we look more closely at the nature of trust in human interaction, we see a broadening definition beyond purely financial transactions. Humans have developed complex social interaction behavior that significantly pre-dates structured commerce. Historically, trust has been a critical part of these social interactions. The methods by which humans assess and develop trustworthiness is embedded in the nature of our communications and our ability to evaluate each other and our surroundings. I won’t attempt to describe these complex trust-oriented communications here - there is a significant body of information and research on the topic – however, it is important to understand that these trust-oriented communications are at the heart of increasing the mutual value inherent in human interaction. We can more rapidly encourage these interactions by facilitating trust-oriented communications, and this yields greater value for all involved.

Through the widespread adoption of commercial markets and later ecommerce, we have shown that trust-inducing structures facilitate increased mutual value of financial transactions. Perhaps the next logical step in increasing value production online is to introduce complex trust-oriented communication in a more generalized interaction space. Looking historically at the development of human social behavior, we can see not only a wide range of value-generating human interactions hinging on trustworthiness, but the complex social mechanics required to yield the unrealized potential of these interactions. If we are able to more effectively introduce these social mechanics online, I believe huge returns in mutual value will result from increasingly meaningful online interactions.

Defining Community

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:33:38 -0400

So the nagging thing about community is… what exactly is it? I feel compelled to ask, since the term gets tossed around quite a bit in the blogosphere and elsewhere. The term “social networking” was great back in 2002, but community seems to better capture the current ethos of getting together to do something meaningful. Or when referring to an online community, at least complaining about something meaningful.