Abstract:
With the advent of Web 2.0 and all that it entails, collective intelligence has become a very enticing buzz word in the online arena. With it, individuals become more empowered, information is generated and shared in ways that it never has before, and the Internet now provides a place that is decentralized and democratized. Yet what are the underlying implications of such a phenomenon? How can people understand the individual roles they play in such an arena? Though online collective intelligence is usually considered a positive phenomenon, there exist many underlying implications that often go unseen and must be considered in order to truly understand the impact of this phenomenon and the technology that enables it. This project explores such questions and seeks to demonstrate, visualize, and experiment with the idea of collective intelligence as it pertains to Wikipedia, the online community-driven free encyclopedia.
