Pierre Levy

The number of travelers along the information superhighway is increasing at a rate of 10 percent a month. How will this communications revolution affect our culture and society? Pierre Lévy shows how the unfettered exchange of ideas in cyberspace has the potential to liberate us from the social and political hierarchies that have stood in the way of mankind's advancement.Anthropologist, historian, sociologist, and philosopher, Lévy writes with a depth of scholarship and imaginative insight rare among media critics. At once a profound historical analysis of the development of human culture and a blueprint for the future, Collective Intelligence is a visionary work.

Collective Intelligence

Sarah Sammis

I came across Collective Intelligence by Pierre Lévy in my research for the Patron 2.0 paper. It was cited in Henry Jenkins's book, Fans, Bloggers and Gamers. Although the book was written in 1997, well before the advent of social media, the theory is solid and completely applicable to the discussion of Web 2.0.

Lévy begins his discussion with books. The written word is humanity's first and longest lived way of generating collective intelligence. Libraries are repositories of knowledge waiting to be read and interacted with. The modern day wiki, blog, social tagging or microblogging site (such as Twitter) are new expressions of collective intelligence.

While the book wasn't entirely on topic for my research, as I was looking for discussions of blogging in a library setting, the theory was nonetheless fascination. It also provided background for me to format my own research questions around.

Collective Intelligence

Reviews