A Computational Model of Crowds for Collective Intelligence

Abstract

In this work, we present a high-level computational model of IT-mediated crowds for collective intelligence. We introduce the Crowd Capital perspective as an organizational-level model of collective intelligence generation from IT-mediated crowds, and specify a computational system including agents, forms of IT, and organizational knowledge. As far as we are aware, this work, and our simulation software, represents the first attempt to computationally model the organizational knowledge generating capacity of IT-mediated crowds. Further, as far as we know, the work is also the first of its kind to computationally model episodic and collaborative IT structures, distinguishing those forms of IT that require crowd collaboration for knowledge generation, from those that do not.

Keywords: IT-Mediated Crowds, Computational Model, Collective Intelligence, Simulation, Crowd Capital, Crowd Capability, Dispersed Knowledge, IT Structure, Agents, Organizational Knowledge, Agent-Based Modelling, Crowdsourcing, Prediction Markets, Citizen Science, Wikis, Episodic IT, Collaborative IT