Understanding Collective Intelligence

A group of individuals working together, in a collaborative or coordinated manner, can show remarkable group (collective) intelligence. The group intelligence is not merely an aggregation of intelligence of all individuals in the group, but is often much more. There can be a synergistic combination of individual abilities to produce higher capability at the group level. With the technological advancements in information and communication technologies, computers and other electronic devices have become mediators between the individuals in a group, who need not to be geographically at the same place. New kinds of technology mediated groups and the concept of computer supported collaborative work are being explored. One of the key research question now is "how can people and computers be connected so that collectively they act more intelligently than any individual, group, or computer has ever done before?". This book attempts to present our work on the collective intelligence concept along a detailed examination of some of the important issues in it.