Thursday, April 22, 2010

S03 Collective Intelligence

"Consumption has become a collective process" (Jenkins 4).

There are times when I get on Facebook that several people have posted the same video. Where is this information coming from? It is as if there is a collective source of knowledge. This is what the internet does. It provides for a collective space for knowledge to be shared in. When there is a scandal, almost everyone has the same information. It creates a collective memory and essentially connects an imagined community not only on the source (Facebook) but also information.

How does this information even come about? Sites like Google cater to larger companies who purchase ad space and it caters to the consumers who choose the popular websites. The consumer chooses a lot of what appears when they enter a website because it is based on what the consumer has a tendency of checking online. (All my Facebook adds mention Jason Mraz and fraternities) "The Internet is the material evidence of the existence of the self-organizing, infinitely productive activities of con- nected human minds." (11) All this work by the consumer is creating free labor. We create the content that appears on websites and at the same time consume it.

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