In a previous post, we discussed Collaboratively Creative Convergent Crowd-sourced Content Creation.
It is inherently, a discussion about creativity and innovation.
So the progression so far is as such,
1. Ideas are the currency of the new economy and
2. each and every idea is an evolution from what existed before.
3. Innovation then, more often than not comes in the form of a convergent duality at the confluence of ideas from totally different modalities.
4. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the greater the modal divergence, i.e. the further the mental leap required to bring convergence and the more unlikely the pairing, the greater the perceived innovation and hence, the more creative.
5. Each piece of content is also crowd curated. In a truly democratic one man one vote(one share) fashion, through popular vote, the best content gains exposure through the network of shares and forms the foundation for the next evolution of creative content.
One might think that putting every piece of crowd sourced content through the grinder of crowd curation would drag the content down to the lowest common denominator. Undoubtably there is some content which is obviously bottom scraping popularity fodder but by and large, the output as an evolution of creativity is quite impressive.
Perhaps the reason for this is illustrated in The Wisdom of Crowds (Great read from a social media standpoint by the way) , published in 2004, written by James Surowiecki. In it he mentions some key criteria to seperate wise crowds from irrational one, or perhaps criteria for inspiring creative output.
- Diversity of Opinion – Each person is entitled to have their own interpretation of facts even if it is slightly eccentric.
- Independence – Each Person’s opinions should not be determined by the opinions of others around.
- Decentralization – People are each able to draw on specialized skillsets and locak knowledge.
- Aggregation – a platform exists for turning personal private judgements and opinions into a collective decision.
It does make sense. Left to their own devices, with their own opinions, and given a platform to build on, the internet seems to offer an ideal melting pot of conditions for Collaboratively Creative Convergent Crowd-sourced, Crowd-Curated Content Creation.
Just typing it out makes me smile.
🙂
