Peer Review Paragraph

Original Paragraph

In large cooperative systems, an individual’s input is not important in the grand scheme of the collective intelligence. As one passively contributes to the collective intelligence, “there is not a rag of originality about [his ideas] anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing” (225). As one plagiarizes in an attempt to add to the collective intelligence, hardly anything is added. In this way, it is difficult to actively contribute something substantial. Johnson describes this idea, characteristic of organized systems, through the example of Manchester, a city which has “a personality that self-organizes out of millions of individual decisions, a global order built out of local interactions,” (Johnson 199). In such a city, individual decisions do not have significant impact. The collective intelligence is instead derived from the contribution of all individuals involved. The nature of humanity and the potential of knowledge necessitate that individuals have minimal impact on the collective intelligence. On the other hand, crowdsourcing is a much smaller scale cooperative system in which individuals contribute significantly to a solution. For example, creative med students “came up with a way to put a stethoscope in one ear, using very simple signal-tracking technology to match what they were heaving in the patient’s chest to the cataloged conditions” (Davidson 52). In this scenario, the creativity necessary for the innovation was not equally possessed by everyone who took part in the experiment. Few specific students were able to come up with a solution to an unrecognized problem and receive credit for their work. Crowdsourcing can be differentiated from organized complexity and plagiarism because small, originally nonexistent problems are solved. Instead of adding to a collective pool of knowledge, specific niches for certain problems can grow. In such a scenario, the an individual's agency is important for the final product. However, when every crowdsourced solution is examined side by side with every other crowdsourced solution, an individual’s creativity is once again lost in the mass of information. Collective intelligence as it relates to all of humanity is unreliant on an individual’s contribution.

Revised Paragraph

In large cooperative systems, an individual’s input is not important in the grand scheme of the collective intelligence. As one passively contributes to the collective intelligence, “there is not a rag of originality about [his ideas] anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing” (Lethem 225). In one’s attempts to add to the collective intelligence, they inherently plagiarize. In this way, it is difficult to actively contribute something substantial. Johnson describes this difficulty, characteristic of organized systems, through the example of Manchester, a city which has “a personality that self-organizes out of millions of individual decisions, a global order built out of local interactions,” (Johnson 199). In such a city, individual decisions do not have significant impact. For example, when many poor people live in proximity the area distinctly becomes the slums, yet when one poor person lives somewhere it is simply a home with no greater consequence. The collective intelligence is instead derived from the contribution of all individuals involved. The nature of humanity and the potential of knowledge necessitate that individuals have minimal impact on the collective intelligence. Because there are so many people with many problems to solve, it is impossible for one person to significantly contribute to the collective intelligence. On the other hand, crowdsourcing is a much smaller scale cooperative system in which individuals contribute significantly to a solution. For example, creative medical students “came up with a way to put a stethoscope in one ear, using very simple signal-tracking technology to match what they were heaving in the patient’s chest to the cataloged conditions” (Davidson 52). In this scenario, the creativity necessary for the innovation was not equally possessed by everyone who took part in the iPod experiment. Few specific students were able to come up with a solution to an unrecognized problem and receive credit for their work. Crowdsourcing can be differentiated from organized complexity and plagiarism because small, originally nonexistent problems are solved. Instead of adding to a collective pool of knowledge, specific niches for certain problems can grow. In such a scenario, an individual's agency is important for the final product. However, once every crowdsourced solution eventually blends into the collective intelligence with every other crowdsourced solution, an individual’s creativity is lost in the mass of information. While individuals may continually implement more creative solutions, causing them to stand out, Lethem’s plagiarism model states that what seems creative is just an appropriation of various past knowledge. As a result, creative solutions are similarly appropriated to the point where the original creative mind goes unrecognized thereafter. Simply put, there is far too much information and too many slight innovations for any creative individual to stand out in the long run. In the end, the total collective intelligence does not rely on an individual’s contribution.

In revising this paragraph, I tried to respond to every peer comment. One comment was that it was not specific enough in the organized complexity example. By giving an example, I think the argument becomes much clearer. At the end, my peer commented that I was making a contradiction by saying that individual creativity is still lost in the crowdsourcing model because they still make an accomplishment. While that may be true, I went into a deeper analysis upon revision to explain why that accomplishment is not really that important. Even though I stand by my original argument and do not see that section as contradictory, I will look at it once again as I continually revise my thesis. Another peer commented that this paragraph is essentially a comparison of summaries as opposed to real analysis. I think that by substantiating the second half of this paragraph in regards to crowdsourcing, I made more analysis in my connections. However, I realize that the nature of my thesis and my argument may lead to over summarization. My current thesis is definitely not specific enough to make a legitimate argument which is something that I will revise in the future. However, I think that this paragraph now makes a much clearer argument which will help in redrafting the thesis.