RD 2 Paragraph Revision

Original
By giving original works new purpose, one can find his distinct role in collaboration. Lethem introduces the idea that “...second comers might do a much better job than the originator with the original idea” (Lethem 217). When a creator puts an idea into the world for the first time, his mind predominantly views it in one specific light, or for one specific purpose, giving it a miniscule outreach and impact in comparison to its potential. However, when another creator, or creators, can take that idea and add his own perspective to it, amazing things can occur and the product can advance itself beyond the originator’s intentions. For example, at Duke University, students were able to repurpose the iPod, a device designed for music, to serve people academically (Davidson). Students could listen to Shakespeare, Calculus lectures, and comedic podcasts without leaving their own earbuds, not only in Durham, North Carolina, but across the world because of their innovations. Davidson enforces, “This was a conceptual breakthrough: that a commercial product might also be susceptible to consumer customization....to a product with a far more fixed, finite identity” (Davidson 53). By creating new uses for the iPod, students were able to add longevity to a product that could have died out much more quickly, therefore advancing Steve Job’s vision by adding their own individual spin, still without compromising the original idea. Repurposing, additionally, can go beyond accelerating a concept, and instead truly transform it into something unrecognizable, really establishing the new collaborator’s unique thought process. For instance, when Lethem receives his first novel as a gift from his friend, instead of a traditional paperback, as an intricate, modern art piece (Lethem 219). The artist interpreted Lethem’s work as something completely different and published it, not as a way to steal or infringe on Lethem’s intellectual property, but as a medium to express his own ideas. Through that collaboration, Lethem’s work could be expanded to art appreciators and modernists, as opposed to only those who enter a library or bookstore, thus fulfilling more of the object’s potential. These situations perfectly exemplify the following conclusion by Thomas Jefferson: “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction to himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.’” (Lethem 218). Through both examples of repurposing, one can see the reflection of the successor’s individuality in the revitalized purpose and more widespread audience of users, appreciators, and understanders.
Revised
By giving original works new purpose, one can find his distinct role in collaboration. Lethem introduces the idea that “...second comers might do a much better job than the originator with the original idea” (Lethem 217). When a creator puts an idea into the world for the first time, his mind predominantly views it in one specific light, or for one specific purpose, giving it a miniscule outreach and impact in comparison to its potential. However, when another creator, or creators, can take that idea and add his own perspective to it, amazing things can occur and the product can advance itself beyond the originator’s intentions. For example, at Duke University, students were able to repurpose the iPod, a device designed for music, to serve people academically (Davidson). Davidson enforces, “This was a conceptual breakthrough: that a commercial product might also be susceptible to consumer customization....to a product with a far more fixed, finite identity” (Davidson 53). By creating new uses for the iPod, students were able to add longevity to a product that could have died out much more quickly, therefore advancing Steve Job’s vision by adding their own individual spin, still without compromising the original idea. Repurposing, additionally, can go beyond accelerating a concept, and instead truly transform it into something unrecognizable, really establishing the new collaborator’s unique thought process. For instance, when Lethem receives his first novel as a gift from his friend, instead of a traditional paperback, as an intricate, modern art piece (Lethem 219). The artist interpreted Lethem’s work as something completely different and published it, not as a way to steal or infringe on Lethem’s intellectual property, but as a medium to express his own ideas. Through that collaboration, Lethem’s work could be expanded to art appreciators and modernists, as opposed to only those who enter a library or bookstore, thus fulfilling more of the object’s potential. These situations perfectly exemplify the following conclusion by Thomas Jefferson: “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction to himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.’” (Lethem 218). The students were able to take from Jobs' idea and illuminate it, as the artist did with Lethem's novel, still allowing those original two lights to shine just as brightly as before on their own. Through both examples of repurposing, one can see the reflection of the successor’s individuality in the revitalized purpose and more widespread audience of users, appreciators, and understanders.
Analysis
One of my peers commented that the original version of this paragraph contained too much summary, so in the revision I tried to cut down on that. By cutting down on retelling of the authors' ideas and stories, my own thoughts can take center stage, thus allowing my thesis to be more prominent. I also elaborated on Jefferson's quote to establish its purpose in the paragraph more clear. While my peers did not have too many negative critiques on my essay, their feedback was still greatly appreciated and helpful in making my paper the best it can be.

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.

Paragraph Revision

Original:

In a similar sense, intelligence is a collaborative effort, as it is a sum of research and facts shared by the world and gathered to form understanding of various topics and fields. Lethem mentions Don Swanson’s work, which shed light on Raynaud’s syndrome solely through the collection and integration of various bits of information sprinkled across various scientific journals (223). Facts alone didn’t solve this problem, even though they were all present in some form, albeit separate. It was the intervention of Swanson, who put the facts together and used them to grasp an understanding of the topic that truly solved the issue. However, Swanson couldn’t call the work his own, since he did none of the research, he merely took other researcher’s works and melded them together to form a new understanding on a pre-existing topic. In this sense, this is a collaboration between Swanson and the researchers he gleamed information from. But at the same time, the “intelligence” that arose from this collaboration is a product of Swanson’s efforts, not the other researchers. The researchers only provided information for Swanson to use. By sorting these facts into a comprehensible format, Swanson brought “intelligence” out of the swarm of facts he collected. In a similar fashion, the AIs described in Johnson’s essay use a series of components that perform simple tasks and report to a single, higher up component which takes the input and then makes sense of the information (206-207). Ultimately, intelligence is composed of a bunch of assorted individual “intelligences,” and is “made” using an understanding of the components, assimilating the cacophony of their voices into a coherent message.

Revised:

In a similar sense, intelligence is a collaborative effort, as it is a sum of research and facts shared by the world and gathered to form understanding of various topics and fields. Lethem mentions Don Swanson’s work, which shed light on Raynaud’s syndrome solely through the collection and integration of various bits of information sprinkled across various scientific journals (223). Facts alone didn’t solve this problem, even though they were all present in some form, albeit separate. It was the intervention of Swanson, who put the facts together and used them to grasp an understanding of the topic that truly solved the issue. However, Swanson cannot be solely credited for this discovery; he merely took other researcher’s works and melded them together to form a new understanding on a pre-existing topic. But Swanson was not altogether removed from the process. Swanson brought “intelligence” out of the swarm of facts he collected, acting as the “overseer” by bringing together the chaotic mess of information. In a similar fashion, the AIs described in Johnson’s essay use a series of components that perform simple tasks and report to a single, higher up component which takes the input and then makes sense of the information (206-207). Much like Swanson’s research, a sum is built using assembled components, many of which are unrelated and ignorant of each other, and are integrated together to create a working product. Ultimately, intelligence is composed of a bunch of assorted individual “intelligences,” and is “made” using an understanding of the components, assimilating the cacophony of their voices into a coherent message.

My paragraph suffered from ambiguous and contradictory wording about Swanson’s contribution, so I cleaned up the sentences to argue my point clearly. In addition, although my peer reviewers didn’t notice, my analysis of Johnson’s AI was a bit lacking and the connection between Swanson and the AI was not fully fleshed out. After contemplating for a bit, I realized my thesis was too broad, and decided to narrow it down a bit, using my revisions as a starting point. The main idea of this paragraph didn’t really change, but some of the connections my peer reviewers pointed out got me thinking of other places in my other paragraphs that could be modified or contained connections I hadn’t realized before. Since my essay isn’t finished yet, I’m still not sure how or where this will exactly fit into my thesis, or even if I’ve completely finished revising it, but this paragraph definitely will help in arguing some aspect of my thesis.

Second Rough Draft

Original 

Copyright is thought to be a way for artists and inventors to receive credit for their ideas; and it is. However, “the primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors but to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” (Lethem 224). In other words, copyright prevents others from claiming someone else’s work and at the same time allows that persons work to be built off of. In Cathy Davidson’s essay she describes giving students iPods and “simply [asking] [them] to dream up learning applications for this cool little device” (Davidson 49). The act of copyright therefore allowed the students to take credit for all the applications that came of this project, while still keeping the integrity of Apple. The collaboration of the iPod and the Duke University students lead to countless new uses that transformed the once toy, into an academic tool. However, this does not mean that taking someone’s work and slightly tweaking it is collaboration.

Revised

Copyright is thought to be a way for artists and inventors to receive credit for their ideas; and it is. However, “the primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors but to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” (Lethem 224). In other words, copyright prevents others from claiming someone else’s work and at the same time allows that person’s work to be built off of. Sometimes it is necessary for people to collaborate with copyright protections in order to further a certain subject area, such as education. In Cathy Davidson’s essay, “Project Classroom Makeover”, she describes giving students iPods and “simply [asking] [them] to dream up learning applications for this cool little device” (Davidson 49). The act of copyright therefore allowed the students to take credit for all the applications that came from this project, while keeping the integrity of Apple. This provides businesses with an incentive to bring in outside intelligence because, as seen with the iPods, a businesses’ product can be improved and thus lead to more users. Copyright laws, however, are not always this helpful. In many instances copyright law has prevented artists from being able to release new works and has enabled corporations to take advantage of people.

The main changes that I made to this paragraph had to do with adding more analysis that could directly help my thesis. I am still uncertain as to what I want my thesis to be exactly, but I have a much better understanding on what my writing format has to be. Also I can see what kind of details and how much detail is to be expected in each supporting paragraph. As I continued to write this paragraph, the more analysis I did allowed me to see clearer ideas for a good thesis. The main thing I was missing seems to be transitions and a way to continue my argument. Before the peer review my argument got a little weak, but with the extra analysis it is back on track. 

RD 2 Feedback

After having had a chance to look over your rough drafts, I’ve decided that we should spend some more time talking about Lethem and revising our original arguments. In a lot of cases, I’m seeing significant progress from Paper 1 in terms of the ways you’re making connections between texts and using textual evidence. But in other cases, this somewhat broader paper prompt has led to arguments that are diffuse, disorganized, or underdeveloped.

Remember: the prompt asks you to consider how collective intelligence reflects individual agency, so you can’t simply offer a thesis that says, “collective intelligence reflects individual agency.” It doesn’t answer the question. Instead, you should try to think about the ways the texts represent relationships between collective intelligence and individual agency (or don’t), then come up with a claim that explains your interpretation of some aspect of this relationship. Under what circumstances is this relationship visible? What changes it? How is understanding it useful to solve some particular problem? The more specific the question you’re answering, the clearer your argument will be. It’s important to narrow your focus to some extent in order to ensure that you can sufficiently address it in 5 pages.

Related to that issue, I’ve noticed that a number of pages turn to dictionaries to define “intelligence” or “collective intelligence.” Remember: you should use the dictionary to clarify the way the authors are using the term if it isn’t clear from close reading, but you should start with their words first. Hopefully, the dictionary entries should show you that intelligence has more than one meaning: your job is to find which one or ones are most applicable to your discussion.

Also, a note on organization: as I mentioned before, it’s often the case that in writing our early drafts, we tend to write our way to a more specific point. I’ve seen a number of paragraphs with topic sentences that describe some feature of one of the texts. But then the paragraphs themselves will often touch on connections between texts, or the ways in which a keyword from one text applies to another. As you revise, try to identify the specific contribution of each paragraph; your topic sentence should reflect that. This is especially important in papers about 3 texts: since you now have to balance a number of perspectives, you really need to focus on connections rather than devoting too much time to a single text. Don’t feel obligated to cram in examples from each text in every paragraph: let the topic of the paragraph determine what texts are most relevant to bring up.

In the coming days, I will compile another Google Document with examples from rough drafts that we can workshop in class. If you want more individualized feedback, consider attending office hours or emailing me to set up an in-person or online meeting to discuss your work.

Essay Revision

Original Paragraph

This collective intelligence phenomenon produces results that benefit the whole group of individuals who contribute to it, yet this phenomenon is completely unintentional. In Davidson’s Project Classroom Makeover, the students at Duke University made iPod learning apps in order to receive free iPods from the university. Before Davidson knew it, the, “...iPods suddenly tripled and quadrupled in perceived value: Everyone wanted one” (Davidson 51). With this high value of the iPod, the students were highly motivated to do whatever they could to get their hands on one. What ultimately happened was that the iPod was transformed, “from a listening device into an interactive broadcasting device,” due to the students’ individual efforts to create learning apps to use in their classes. But, remember, this was not the goal of the experiment. The original goal of the experiment was to, “create a calculated exercise in disruption, distraction, and difference: a lesson in institutional unlearning…” (50). Even each student’s goal was not to create a technological revolution; they just wanted free iPods. It was as a result of these individual goals that the unintentional yet greater accomplishment of showing the potential of technology was able to bloom.


Revised Paragraph

The elimination of the fear of plagiarism or any sort of control on the development of ideas has the ability to revolutionize one of the most traditional systems in the world: the education system.. In Davidson’s Project Classroom Makeover, the students at Duke University made iPod learning apps in order to receive free iPods from the university. Before Davidson knew it, the, “...iPods suddenly tripled and quadrupled in perceived value: Everyone wanted one” (Davidson 51). With this high value of the iPod, the students were highly motivated to do whatever they could to get their hands on one. What ultimately happened was that the iPod was transformed, “from a listening device into an interactive broadcasting device,” due to the students’ individual efforts to create learning apps to use in their classes. When free to develop their own ideas, even if they are inspired by existing works, the students were able to accomplish a technological and educational revolution. The ability for the students at Duke to be able to accomplish this is illuminated by the role of a lack of hierarchy in the city of Manchester. The city, “...lay at the confluence of several world-historical rivers: the nascent industrial technologies of steam-powered looms; the banking system of commercial London; the global markets and labor pools of the British empire” (Johnson 196). Without any planners or a government, the city was free to be influenced by the most dominant economies and societies of the West at the time. As a result, “...Manchester attracted a steady stream of intellectuals and public figures...in search of the modern world’s future” (196). Manchester became the center of intellectuals in its prime without any limit on the influence of the environment on it. Such a concept should be applied to the education system in order to make it evolve as much as the city of Manchester did in a mere century-and-a-half.

The main change I made in this paragraph is, first, removing the parts that were basically summaries. Second, I added on a part that supported the first part of the paragraph with an example from Johnson's text, and then I related it to the idea of the fear of plagiarism from Lethem's text. The reason is that all of my paragraphs were originally simple summaries about how all the essays show an element of collective intelligence. In all of my paragraphs, I connected multiple essays to achieve a larger idea. I also had to change my thesis to reflect this change in argument.

Revision

Before Revision:

The relationship of crowdsourcing to all of this is that it facilitates the process of helping a person find where he or she belongs. By the sharing of different ideas within a group and collaborating, connections can be made as well as introducing people to different perspectives. By exposing a person to certain other people that have resulted from different other influences, it is easier for a person to see within themselves certain traits or views that are either the same or contrasting. As a result of this, they can then begin to situate themselves into society. 

Revised:

The relationship of crowdsourcing to all of this is that it facilitates the process of helping a person find where he or she belongs. By the sharing of different ideas within a group and collaborating, connections can be made as well as introducing people to different perspectives. However, there does lie a problem in this as presented by Davidson. The problem is the “one size fits all model of standards” that lies in our society and is exemplified by the fact that “as we narrow the spectrum of skills that we test in schools, more and more kids who have skills outside the spectrum will be labeled as failures” when in fact they simply hold a different place in society (Davidson 61). Davidson looks at this through the lens of school education, which is one of many circumstances where it is relative. In this case, the narrow minded standardized approach of the school system, contrasting it with the iPod experiment, where many different kids were able to exemplify different skills and attributes of their own without failing or being deemed unintelligent. A student talented in music could realize that talent as it is amplified when compared to a student with talents in literature, or another student with talents in science, all while working on the same iPod project. Intelligence at that point is all relative compared to the other students. This intelligence is, once again, a result of the influence said person has encountered, and pretty soon the behaviors of the person form into a pattern, and with these patterns, it is easier for one to identify their niche, whether its among the music industry or the medical field, and before you know it a society is formed on its own. Johnson’s mentions how “all you need are thousands of individuals and a few simple rules of interaction” and before you know it these interactions among people, allow them to see in themselves what they haven't before and be able to identify with some people while disregarding others (Johnson 199). By exposing a person to certain other people that have resulted from different other influences, it is easier for a person to see within themselves certain traits or views that are either the same or contrasting. As a result of this, they can then begin to situate themselves into society. 

A note Matthew gave me was to work on this paragraph because it was rather short and allowed for opportunity to add in textual support. So, I did exactly that. I added in certain quotes and ideas from Davidson and Johnson that were relevant to my thesis and was able to elaborate and expand on a number of ideas. I was also able to add more in about intelligence, something that I did not have enough about in my rough draft. Overall, I was able to add more textual citations and elaborate and better explain a certain point of my thesis about interactions and their effects on people's ideas.