I recently finished reading a case study done by Jane on the game “I Love Bees“. This case study introduced to me certain aspects of the concept of collective intelligence that I never knew existed and I couldn’t help wonder about certain stuff.
During my schooling days, there was a concerted drive to encourage and increase class participation. One of the problems we had then was the putting up of hands in the sense that very few people did so to contribute an answer or ask a question. I guess there was also this strong sense of face and no one wanted to ask a dumb question or offer the wrong answer.
There was always this sense though that if more of us had dared to ask the ‘dumb’ question or give the ‘wrong’ answer, all of us would have learnt more. Jane talks about this when she shares what one of the players of the game said, “There’re a lot of trees to bark up the wrong way before hitting on anything.”
I wonder whether because of our national consciousness to constantly seek for results that innovation suffers because we do not allow ourselves to bark up the wrong trees.
I’m not sure about the students currently in our education system, but I hope things have changed so that they can grow more than we did in the classroom and become more than passive sponges.
Jane also goes on and shares about how everyone in the game contributed in their own way with their own skill sets and played a part in the increasing the collective intelligence - the game empowered players of all skill levels, natural abilities, inclinations and interests to achieve success. I think in the Singapore context, the education system has tried to evolve to provide such a framework for our students where all of them are empowered to succeed and not just those streamed to the gifted, special and express programmes.
The thing that struck me in context of the above was the players of the different skill sets were brought together by the game to achieve success together. In the Singapore context, I can’t help but have the feeling that although now more of us are empowered to succeed, it is more of individual success and not group success.
One reason why I have this feeling is because of my university experiences. There was a tendency for people ( who weren’t friends but only course mates ) to only share their knowledge if you explicitly ask them and they would only offer as little as possible. There was no open mutual sharing of knowledge within the people of a course except between those who were friends and that is a small subset.
I think this is because of our famous kiasu mentality where we always just want the best for ourselves and we believe that in order for one to succeed, another must do worst. Our overemphasis on grades and ranking does not help change this mentality.
Another thing I noticed about my university days is that there was a tendency for people not to put in effort (or keep it at a minimum) during group work. The focus in any semester were the modules where you’re individually graded. If people could, there was a tendency to contribute as little as possible to the group project in terms of time, ideas and energy. Things weren’t so bad if you did a project with friends, but with course-mates there was this sense of guarding oneself from being taken advantage of.
I was trying to solve a coding problem at work today and as usual I searched all the open repositories of information. And a thought struck me about the contribution of Singaporeans into the open source community. Again, I couldn’t help but think most of us are just passive consumers or maybe I’m just superimposing my own guilt of just being a sponge in this area.
The thing is I think most of us do not just want to consume. I believe even on the net, despite the increase in people blogging and user-generated social media, there is still the fear of putting up the hand in certain contexts.
And so back to the question in my title. Can we be collectively intelligent? Are we collectively dumb? Can Singaporeans come together and solve a game like “I Love Bees”. Would we be like what we always joke about in kungfu movies? The kind of “masters” that teach only 9 movies and keep the 10th killer one so that we still have a trump card. Do we have the skill sets to search, collect and analyze information as a group independent of some guiding hand?
This I believe is an important question especially in light of the MDA’s $500 million fund to drive the development of an IDM hub because I believe that even though each team will be working on their own project, the success of all the teams really depend on how much all of us as a community come together and help each other. Maybe instead of the teams seeing themselves as independent entities racing towards a prize, they can see themselves as part of a bigger collective reaching out for a common goal.
How about a wiki where all the startups involved with the fund can contribute their experiences, share their roadblocks and solve them together?
Will we be open to share ideas and not be afraid they get stolen? Will we be receptive to other people’s contributions? Do we all know how to share without coming across overly critical resulting in communication breakdowns? Do we know how to share without being smug? Do we know how to create our own channels for collaboration?
So are we collectively dumb? Can we be collectively intelligent? I don’t know. But I can’t help but imagine the possibilities if we could all come together the way those players did. Honestly, what they did is amazing and it blows the mind.
Post a Comment