Blog #2 - Ch 4 – Social-Digital Know-How: The Arts and Sciences of Collective Intelligence by Rheingold

Reading chapter 4 from Rheingold’s book was very interesting. He started his chapter by sharing how the World Wide Web was invented. I think that it was perfect for him to share in the beginning of his chapter since he then moved on to talk pretty much about online collaboration. I found interesting how he talked about the terms: coordination, cooperation, and collaboration, since I had never thought about these terms the way he talked about them in the chapter. I found fascinating the example he gave from the Canadian person defining these terms. That person put it this way: “you need coordination to dance, cooperation to dance with a partner, and collaboration to dance with a flash mob.” I am no dancer, but reading this explanation really helped me see the difference between these terms. Indeed, when we participate online, we do it in various ways. I see these terms as he explained them as levels in which we start participating online. And to my understanding, they actually happen in the order that he had them. We first coordinate, then we cooperate, and then, when we’re ready, we collaborate.

Rheingold later on talked about the idea of collective intelligence. From what he talked about, it seems to be more powerful when humans put their ideas together to accomplish something. I loved how he said “when all of us can be smarter than any of us.” That said a lot to me because it made me think about all the times I’ve heard that it can be difficult to work in a group together and agree to the same ideas. However, I’ve learned over the years how powerful it can be to collaborate with one another to accomplish something. I’ve seen how the best ideas have come from group meetings. I liked how Rheingold brought in the idea of collective intelligence because it is indeed powerful.

Rheingold ended his chapter by talking about Wiki Collaboration. This section of the chapter was also very interesting to me. Although I’ve been more involved online now than I have in the past years, I still feel like I need a detailed “how-to” when it comes to certain things online. I appreciated how Rheingold took the time to actually go through the details about how to collaborate online. He also makes you feel so confident as he states: “contributing to Wikipedia is simple enough. Here’s how:…” and then he goes on with a detailed yet simple enough list as to how to contribute to Wikipedia. I have to admit, I once was asked by a professor to input information into Wikipedia as one of our class projects, and I have NO IDEA as to how I got that done. I clicked on things and figured it out but I have no recollection as to how I did it, so Rheingold’s list was a helpful reminder for me. Now, I have a go-to list that I can use in the future if I decide to ever post anything on Wikipedia again.