Melda M. Washington

Information Culture, October 15, 2012

“The Power of the Swarm”

Overview

Introduction The Swarm Examples Conclusion

Introduction

Focus on the few quotes that address the masses or the swarm: Dumb parts, properly constituted into a swarm,

yield smart results. The aim of swarm power is superior

performance in a turbulent environment. The net demands wiser customers. Expertise now resides in fanatical customers.

The world's best experts on your product or service, don't work for your company. They are your customers, or a hobby tribe.

The Swarm cont.

The Internet made collecting the wisdom of crowds much easier than before.

When diverse, independent and decentralized, their combined decisions are on point.

Swarms can tell us where the next big trends are. If given free reign, the swarm is much more

capable of setting up its own ethics and rules of operation than a formal group. It’s a stable, robust, and self-correcting system.

The swarm is very efficient in policing themselves.

It is in essence self-correcting and self-policing.

The Swarm cont.

Digital Swarming Is defined as the swarm of people, data,

objects, and machines is becoming a new model for how

organizations work to address challenges and meet goals.

Is the new model that delivers information and support decision making across the network or collective

It addresses the need for agility in the face of rapid change

The Swarm cont.

Facebook and Twitter are examples, while they seamless appear to operate without regulations, in actuality they follow well defined restrictions and rules.

Prediction markets

where large groups of people or the swarm steer decision making on a large scale such as in the stock markets.

they demonstrate the value of collective intelligence

the ability to act collectively to make decisions and solve problems—even if the people in the groups aren’t always aware that’s what they’re doing.

The Wisdom of Crowds

Intrade

Intrade is a prediction market.

It allows you to make predictions on the outcome of hundreds of real-world events.

Prediction markets find the probability of something happening - a predefined, uncertain future event.

The simExchange

Utilizes the Wisdom of Crowd to predict the upcoming best selling and top rated video games.

Stock market for video games

Use virtual money to buy stock in games

HSX

Hollywood Stock Exchange is The Entertainment Market™ where you can buy and trade movies, stars and more.

Prices rise with a blockbuster opening

Prices plummet with a bomb

Conclusion

The network economy has shifted the focus from exchange of goods and services to exchange of ideas.

At the forefront of this network economy and spreading these ideas are the champions of this exchange: The diverse, independent and decentralized

—Swarm.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market

http://blog.tmcnet.com/digital-swarm/

http://www.kk.org/newrules/blog/