{"id":1971,"date":"2010-10-10T09:20:43","date_gmt":"2010-10-10T16:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=1971"},"modified":"2010-10-10T09:20:43","modified_gmt":"2010-10-10T16:20:43","slug":"hold-that-thought-part-5-of-techcrunch-disrupted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2010\/10\/10\/hold-that-thought-part-5-of-techcrunch-disrupted\/","title":{"rendered":"Collective intelligence, diversity, and social networks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">Originally published as &#8220;Hold that thought&#8221;<br \/>\n(Part 5 of &#8220;TechCrunch, disrupted&#8221;)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/authenticorganizations.com\/harquail\/2010\/09\/30\/if-women-had-designed-facebook\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/authenticorganizations.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/3206288452_437a150b01_o.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"246\" \/><\/a>The day after TechCrunch Disrupt ended, a fascinating study on &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/cgi\/content\/abstract\/science.1193147\">collective intelligence<\/a>&#8221; led by Anita Woolley of Carnegie Mellon University appeared in <em>Science<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The researchers found that a group&#8217;s success in solving problems wasn&#8217;t correlated to the average intelligence of the group, or the IQ of the smartest person.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, it was related to &#8220;social sensitivity&#8221;, whether everybody got to participate in the discussions, and the number of women in the group.<\/p>\n<p>The article&#8217;s behind a paywall, but Malicia Rogue&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/hatewasabi.wordpress.com\/2010\/10\/06\/on-savvy-and-groups\/\">On savvy and groups<\/a> discusses it in detail and provides a lot of background.\u00c2\u00a0 There&#8217;s an excellent discussion on <a href=\"http:\/\/geekfeminism.org\/2010\/10\/09\/meritocracy-might-want-to-re-think-how-you-define-merit\/\"><em>GeekFeminism<\/em><\/a>, a <a href=\"http:\/\/cbc.ca\/quirks\/media\/2010-2011\/qq-2010-10-09_03.mp3\">podcast on CBC<\/a>, and good articles in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/news.nationalgeographic.com\/news\/2010\/09\/100930-collective-intelligence-groups-teams-women-sensitive-health-science\/\">National Geographic<\/a><\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=130247631\">NPR<\/a>, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2010\/09\/100930143339.htm\">Science Daily<\/a><\/em>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/news\/national\/if-you-want-collective-smarts-include-women-in-your-group\/article1736571\/\"><em>The Globe and Mail<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody mentioned it in the press coverage, but these results also align with Scott Page&#8217;s underlying model of the value of cognitive diversity in problem solving. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/01\/08\/science\/08conv.html\">Diversity = Productivity<\/a> summarizes Scott&#8217;s work showing why diverse teams perform better than individual experts or even teams of experts &#8212; if they can work together effectively, that is.*\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 So while there&#8217;s a lot more to discuss about this study, for now let&#8217;s just accept its results at face value and hypothesize that they apply to larger teams as well.<\/p>\n<p>Now consider a group that we&#8217;ll call &#8220;TechCrunch and friends&#8221;.\u00c2\u00a0 How effective would we expect them to be at problem solving?<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They&#8217;re not known for their social sensitivity<\/li>\n<li>A few people do a disproportionate share of the talking and a lot of others don&#8217;t get to speak much<\/li>\n<li>There aren&#8217;t a lot of women involved<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hmm, in fact now that I think of it, the same could be said for the whole Silicon Valley, VC\/angel, and tech blogosphere worlds.**<\/p>\n<p>Hold that thought.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/blogs\/laurie-penny\/2010\/10\/social-facebook-geek-women\">socially-insensitive environments where there aren&#8217;t a lot of women involved<\/a>, CV Harquail has a pair of intriguing posts on <em>Authentic Organizations<\/em>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/authenticorganizations.com\/harquail\/2010\/09\/30\/if-women-had-designed-facebook\/\">If Women Had Designed Facebook<\/a> (which is where I got the lovely graphic) suggests that a woman-designed &#8220;Alt-Facebook&#8221; might be warmer, more flexible, inclusive, emotional and much more.\u00c2\u00a0 There&#8217;s some good discussion in the comments as well, from CV, Cynthia Kurtz, and others including me.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/authenticorganizations.com\/harquail\/2010\/10\/05\/facebook-for-women-vs-facebook-designed-by-feminists-different-vs-revolutionary\/\">Designing for Feminists vs. Designing for Women: Different vs. Revolutionary<\/a> goes into a lot more detail and is a fine starting point for a product definition and an open-source community to build it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With women as the majority of Facebook users, a movie portraying their CEO as a sexist asshole, a track record of privacy invasions, you&#8217;d think that the entrepreneurial world would be all over this opportunity &#8212; especially with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dreamwidth.org\/legal\/principles\">Dreamwidth<\/a> as an example of an alternative path.\u00c2\u00a0 And who knows, maybe I just am out of the loop and there are in fact a bunch of startups who have gotten funding to go after it and for some reason none of them demoed at Disrupt.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, maybe something&#8217;s keeping <em>TechCrunch<\/em> and the Silicon Valley, VC\/angel, and tech blogosphere worlds from seeing the opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>Their loss.<\/p>\n<p>jon<\/p>\n<p>* Scott&#8217;s book <em>The Difference<\/em> goes into a lot more detail on the value of diversity and when and why crowds are wise.\u00c2\u00a0 Adam Shostack has a short review <a href=\"http:\/\/emergentchaos.com\/archives\/2008\/02\/scott-pages-the-difference.html\">on <em>Emergent Chaos<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p>** and YCombinator, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-is-Quora-doing-to-improve-the-diversity-of-its-user-base\">Quora<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=1967\">Microsoft and Diaspora<\/a> too. But I digress.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\"><em>image via <a href=\"http:\/\/authenticorganizations.com\/\">Authentic Organizations<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><span style=\"color: #ff00ff;\">Earlier posts in the &#8220;TechCrunch, disrupted&#8221; series:<\/span> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=1552\">Fretting, asking, and begging isn&#8217;t a plan<\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=1795\">Collusion is sooo hot right now<\/a>,<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/tcdisrupted\">The third wave meets the anatomy of awesome<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/tcdisrupted2\">Changing the ratio<\/a>,<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/tcdisrupted3\">A public service announcement<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/tcdisrupted4\">A celebration of disruptive women<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers led by Anita Woolley of Carnegie Mellon University found that a group&#8217;s success in solving problems wasn&#8217;t correlated to the average intelligence of the group, or the IQ of the smartest person.  Instead, it was related to &#8220;social sensitivity&#8221;, whether everybody got to participate in the discussions, and the number of women in the group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[85,113,141,148,159],"class_list":["post-1971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-computer-science-as-a-social-science","tag-diversity","tag-facebook","tag-feminism","tag-gender"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}