Comments on: “The discovery of irregular patterns by group noticings”

By: HanaPipers

HanaPipers — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:28:27 +0000

By: Columbus

Columbus — Sun, 25 May 2008 01:49:00 +0000

To do anything truly worth doing, I must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in with gusto and scramble through as well as I can.

By: gialuca_b

gialuca_b — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 12:10:46 +0000

I would say

Social Debugging

By: Rafael Alvarado

Rafael Alvarado — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 23:04:31 +0000

It’s called “gossip,” which anthropologists have long classified as a means of social control, a transducer of the socially anomolous into the collectively recognized. In this case it’s the community affiliation that is different.

By: phil shapiro

phil shapiro — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 02:41:40 +0000

okay, i’ll give a shot at answering my own question.

the newly coined word might be percepstat.

this is an amalgam of perception and statistics.

that is to say, when groups notice abnormalities and share them they’re engaging in confirming statistics via group perception.

phil

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 15:32:59 +0000

“It’s called a Rumour.”

I’m not sure that’s quite right. One definition of rumour is:

“a story or statement in general circulation without confirmation or certainty as to facts”

There’s no presumption, I don’t think, that all involved have personally witnessed/experienced the basis of the story or statement. But in Phil’s example, it’s not a case of passing along hearsay. People have all made the same observation independently, and are then discovering that others have too.

By: Dominic Cronin

Dominic Cronin — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 14:14:22 +0000

It’s called a Rumour.

By: Ray Grieselhuber

Ray Grieselhuber — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:21:58 +0000

YASC? (Yet Another Social Construct)

By: Seb

Seb — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:45:56 +0000

One could also throw in emergence, to pin down the bottom-up nature of the process. You’d get “emergent community awareness”.

And, this has the bonus of making the expression truly buzzword-compliant :)

By: Seb

Seb — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:38:40 +0000

“Neighborhood watch” has a crime-fighting connotation that might make it seem a little too specific. Stephen’s suggestion is a good generalization. I think “community awareness” or “collective awareness” would be good candidates too.

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:36:07 +0000

“I really like Stephen Downes’ phrase of “community consciousness””

It didn’t grab me right off the bat, but after reading your comment, I agree.

By: Patricia Anderson

Patricia Anderson — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 01:18:36 +0000

It seems to me that the example described relates to the old story about tool-using monkeys — that the community’s awareness reaches critical mass or a communal cognitive tipping point. Critical Mass-tery could be a light-hearted phrase to describe the concept, but … is more clever than useful for communication. Perhaps what might be more appropriate would be a phrase that gives the sense of a society or community that develops a consensual awareness. I really like Stephen Downes’ phrase of “community consciousness” — in contrast with “collective unconscious”, this communicates a that the consciousness is neither universal nor collective, but appears on a more intimate scale yet — that of the local community. It also communicates that the awareness has shifted from unconscious to conscious. Bravo!

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:55:28 +0000

“Is the focus that they are solving / noticing a problem or that the group of people is loosely associated?”

Yes, I think so.

The dialectic between “crowd wisdom” and “mob rule” here intersects with the (mostly negative) comments I was just reading over here — http://www.appscout.com/2007/06/spockcom_its_creepy_its_coolyo.php — about spock.com.

It all keeps coming back to identity, trust, and the possibility (or not) of infusing the new kind of network-mediated loose association with the old meanings of those words.

That said, I think neighborhood watch does nicely, no neologism needed. Not sure community consciousness says anything different. Pattern-scratching is evocative, though, and some variant of that which connotes group activity could take this into territory wider than the neighborhood. Although Phil’s scenario is a neighborhood watch, group noticing is now a decentralized phenomenon and it’s probably the wide-area form that most needs a name.

By: Craig Overend

Craig Overend — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 09:15:32 +0000

Pattern-scratching. One person starts to feel the itch, mentions to a friend who also – they discover – has the itch. Itches; they come and go.

By: Ehud

Ehud — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 05:53:00 +0000

“The wisdom of crowds” would have been a good name. Alas, it is taken.
But I am with Luis – this seems too much like mob mentality.