Book Review: Can collective intelligence change our world?

The premise of this thought-provoking book is that a group of people can offer greater insights than an individual can.
Updated 28 November 2017
Follow

Book Review: Can collective intelligence change our world?

A new field has emerged, carried by a surge of digital technologies. It is known as collective intelligence or crowdsourcing, which has a familiar ring but should not be confused with crowdfunding. Crowdsourcing refers to harnessing the power of a large number of people to implement a task or project to obtain information or to solve a difficult problem. The idea is that a group of people can offer greater insights and better answers than an individual can.
In its most restrictive meaning, collective intelligence is basically concerned with how groups of people cooperate online. In its broadest sense, it is concerned with how all kinds of intelligence happen on large scales.
This latest book by Geoff Mulgan is a perfect introduction to collective intelligence, a little-known discipline that “can change our world.” The book draws on subjects such as social psychology, computer sciences and economics, as well as the author’s experiences as co-founder of the think tank Demos.
The author, who has worked in government, charities, businesses and movements, believes there is a blatant need for more effective innovation to deal with challenges ranging from inequality to aging, climate change and conflict.
“I’ve been fascinated by the question of why some organizations seem so much smarter than others, better able to navigate the uncertain currents of the world around them. Even more fascinating are the examples of organizations full of clever people and expensive technology that nevertheless act in stupid and self-destructive ways,” writes Mulgan.
This leads us to ask how societies and governments are expected to solve complex problems, or in other words: How can a collective problem be resolved with a collective solution? “Collective intelligence has to be consciously orchestrated, supported by specialist institutions and roles, and helped by common standards. In many fields no one sees it as their role to make this happen as a result, the world acts far less intelligently than it could,” writes Mulgan.
This was the case with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) informing then-President George H. W. Bush that the Berlin Wall would not fall, while the news was showing just that. The financial crash of the late 2000s is another perfect example. Despite a plethora of data obtained through sophisticated information technologies, financial analysts, economists and journalists were unable to warn the world about the impending economic disaster.
Moreover, it is estimated that up to 50 percent of antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary, 25 percent of medicines in circulation are counterfeit, and 10-20 percent of diagnoses are incorrect. Despite unprecedented access to medical data, we are still unable to use that information to make better decisions and improve our health.
Collective intelligence is not new. Thucydides’ description of how an army went about planning an assault on a besieged town is one of the first historical accounts of collective intelligence. First, ladders were made; their height was calculated by counting the layers of bricks on the side facing the town.
Nowadays, human eyes have been replaced by Dove satellites, the size of a shoe box, which orbit the globe. They have shown that the spread of night-lights in Myanmar reveals slower economic growth than the World Bank estimates.
In Kenya, they have provided the number of metal roofs, indicating that people are moving out of poverty. In China, Dove satellites have counted the number of trucks in factory parking lots, which denotes industrial output. Satellite pictures are replacing sophisticated statistics.
As machine intelligence has progressed enormously, there have been efforts to develop collective intelligence. The website Polymath encouraged people to help solve the hardest maths problems. It found that many minds could find solutions more successfully than mathematicians working alone.
The recent history of collective intelligence is a combination of humans and machines, organizations and networks. Google Maps is a perfect example. Google lacked the essential skills to reach its goal, so it brought in the knowhow it lacked.
One of the best examples of a human-machine hybrid is found in language teaching. It takes around 130 hours to master a foreign language. Recently, Duolingo combined machines and human intelligence by mobilizing 150,000 responders to test thousands of variants of its online language lessons. Thanks to this collective output, it decreased the time needed to speak a foreign language to 34 hours, and that brought them 100 million learners.
The most exciting examples of hybrids are those that combine humans, machines and animals. Peru has used vultures fitted with GoPro cameras and GPS to seek out illegal garbage dumps, supported by a citizen awareness campaign. Chad has fitted dogs with sensors to track diseases, and the UK has used pigeons to observe air pollution.
For a large number of people to think well, smart minds and smart machines are not enough; infrastructure, virtual and physical, is also needed. The plan Richard Chenevix Trench followed to create the Oxford English Dictionary is a model still used today for similar projects.
To publish an empirical, scientific and comprehensive dictionary, it was necessary to read all available literature and gather every use of every word. Trench acknowledged that such a task required “the combined action of many.” He expected 100,000 contributors but was eventually helped by six million, and it took more than 20 years to finish the first part of the dictionary.
The eradication of smallpox is considered one of the world’s greatest successes of collective intelligence. A successful example of collective intelligence is an assembly of different elements whose synergy gives positive results. These assemblies consist of elements such as organizational models that constantly need to be reassessed because they evolve with changing environments.
“There is a need for new assemblies that can marshal global collective intelligence for global tasks, from addressing climate change to avoiding pandemics, solving problems of unemployment to the challenges of aging,” writes Mulgan.
The subject of collective intelligence brings to mind artificial and machine intelligence. Will robots replace half of all jobs in the next two decades? “Labor markets have proven to be dynamic over the last two centuries coping with massive destruction of jobs and equally massive creation too. There is no obvious reason why a much more automated society would necessarily have fewer jobs,” writes Mulgan.
If we are willing to spend money on smart robots to help or drive us, that will increase the status of what is not automated. This is happening now. Designers’ craft is in demand. Handmade is trendy. And if you want it, you must pay for it. An automated society cannot survive if it consists only of consumers and no workers.
But Mulgan acknowledges that the great drive for new intelligent machines today is driven by military and intelligence agencies, and the development of new intelligent tools to monitor the environment or improve our health still lags far behind. “Creating such tools on a scale, and capabilities proportionate to the challenges, and nurturing people with skills in ‘intelligence design’ will be one of the great tasks facing the 21st century,” he writes.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘California Amphibians and Reptiles’

Updated 18 February 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘California Amphibians and Reptiles’

Authors: Robert Hansen & Jackson D. Shedd

California is home to more than 200 species of reptiles and amphibians that can be found in an extraordinary array of habitats, from coastal temperate rainforests with giant redwoods to southeastern deserts offering dazzling wildflower displays each spring.

“California Amphibians and Reptiles” covers every species and subspecies in this biodiverse region of the United States, with outstanding color photography and in-depth species accounts that draw on the latest findings on taxonomy and distribution.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘There Are Rivers in the Sky’

Photo/Supplied
Updated 18 February 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘There Are Rivers in the Sky’

  • Narin is a Yazidi girl surviving genocide in 2014 Iraq, her spirit as unyielding as the ancient lands she is forced to flee

Author: Elif Shafak

This historical novel by Elif Shafak, “There Are Rivers in the Sky,” was published in 2024 and is a meditation on life, loss and love.

Anchored by the Tigris and Thames rivers serving as motifs, the story drifts across centuries, stitching together fractured lives bound by intimacy, trauma, and the quiet power of water.

There are three characters at the heart of this story.

Arthur is a 19th-century linguist whose passion for Mesopotamia’s ruins eclipses his ability to connect with the living.

Narin is a Yazidi girl surviving genocide in 2014 Iraq, her spirit as unyielding as the ancient lands she is forced to flee.

And then there is Zaleekhah, a hydrologist in modern London, drowning in family secrets until she learns to swim toward redemption.

Their stories collide, ripple and reshape one another. Water is not just a metaphor here, it is a character. The rivers breathe life into memories, erode pain, and carry the weight of history.

Arthur’s obsession with the “Epic of Gilgamesh” mirrors his own loneliness as a man chasing immortality through dusty texts while real love slips through his fingers.

Narin’s resilience, rooted in Yazidi traditions, becomes a lifeline in a world determined to erase her people.

As for Zaleekhah, her journey from guilt to grace feels like watching a storm clear — messy, cathartic, and utterly human.

Shafak’s writing is lush, almost tactile. You can taste the silt of the Tigris, feel London’s rain, and ache with the characters.

But here is the catch: this book demands your attention. The timelines —switching between Victorian letters, wartime horror, and modern angst —are a high-wire act.

While the layers add depth, some readers might stumble over dense historical nods or Yazidi cultural nuances. (A glossary would have been a welcome raft.)

Yet, even its flaws pulse with intention. The same complexity that overwhelms also rewards.

This is not a book you breeze through. It is one you wade into, letting the currents tug you into deep, uncomfortable places.

The pacing does drag at times, and Shafak’s ambition occasionally outruns clarity.

In the end, Shafak asks: Can we ever truly outrun history? Or do we, like rivers, carve new paths while carrying the scars of where we have been?

This novel does not answer so much as invite you to sit with the question, long after the last page turns.

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The African Revolution’ by Richard Reid

Updated 17 February 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘The African Revolution’ by Richard Reid

Africa’s long 19th century was a time of revolutionary ferment and cultural innovation for the continent’s states, societies, and economies. Yet the period preceding what became known as “the Scramble for Africa” by European powers in the decades leading up to World War I has long been neglected in favor of a Western narrative of colonial rule.

The African Revolution demonstrates that “the Scramble” and the resulting imperial order were as much the culmination of African revolutionary dynamics as they were of European expansionism.


What We Are Reading Today: The Power to Destroy

Photo/Supplied
Updated 16 February 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: The Power to Destroy

Author: Michael J. Graetz

The postwar US enjoyed large, widely distributed economic rewards — and most Americans accepted that taxes were a reasonable price to pay for living in a society of shared prosperity.
In 1978 California enacted Proposition 13, a property tax cap that Ronald Reagan hailed as a “second American Revolution,” setting off an antitax, antigovernment wave that has transformed American politics and economic policy.
In The Power to Destroy, Michael Graetz tells the story of the antitax movement and how it holds America hostage — undermining the nation’s ability to meet basic needs and fix critical problems.

 


What We Are Reading Today: Habitats of Africa

Updated 15 February 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Habitats of Africa

Authors: Ken Behrens, Keith Barnes & Iain Campbell

With breathtaking wildlife and stunningly beautiful locales, Africa is a premier destination for birders, conservationists, ecotourists, and ecologists. 

This compact, easy-to-use guide provides an unparalleled treatment of the continent’s wonderfully diverse habitats. 

Incisive and up-to-date descriptions cover the unique features of each habitat, from geology and climate to soil and hydrology, and require no scientific background. Knowing the surrounding environment is essential to getting the most out of your travel experiences.