Collective intelligence is really just a catchy term that may have appeal while we have not yet invested time and energy to try to understand what it was that Doug really saw and intended. But when we do, we'll find the collective mind metaphor so richer in consequences, and so much more to the point!

Here's a brief explanation, which may need to be expanded.

Doug's core (or paradigm shifting) idea was not really collective intelligence, but augmentation, which is a general idea or paradigm how to direct innovation: We look at our knowledge work (or whatever other system may be the context of our innovation task at hand), we look at the humans and the society it is intended to serve, we look at the boundary defining the most urgent or important needs of people and society, we look at the available technology, and we ask: "Which of our top priority needs might be fulfilled with the available or not yet available technology, if we just (creatively) play with it a bit?" Or to use Doug's language, we develop the technological-and-human systems so that they best augment some of our key capabilities, personal and collective. 

And so Doug's really key insight (which he reached, incredibly, in 1951!) was that the then emerging digital computer technology, if we should work with it a bit (which is essentially what he did during the rest of his life), can enable us to augment a completely new capability. He gave it the name CODIAK, for COncurrent Development, Integration and Application of Knowledge. To see what this means, think about the situation before Doug. Imagine that I have an idea how a certain scientific problem X might be solved. But I can't do it alone. I need, say Frode's expertise, but he's in London. And so I write Frode a letter: Frode, could you pls. come to Oslo, I have this great idea how we might go about solving X. And so perhaps in a couple of months, Frode's in Oslo. And then say we are lucky and we succeed in solving X. And so we write an article, and send it to a journal. A year or two later, after a revision or two, our article's in print. But there is this person Y who needs exactly X to create Z (a new technology). Y doesn't know about our research. He might eventually hear about our paper, but the chances are that he won't...

In 1968 Doug demonstrated how the digital computer technology might be used to implement the CODIAK capability: He and his man Bill were editing the same text on the screen, while 2000 people in the audience could instantly see the result (this would of course become possible to anyone across the globe, once this innovation cycle is completed, as it of course has been). 

You will now perhaps easily notice that, although all the enabling technology now exists, and a lot more, we are still not doing academic research and communication the CODIAK style. We are still writing and publishing articles etc., just as if nothing happened. Well of course, we may use Google Docs to co-edit our text, and we may publish it in an online journal etc. But all this is still a far cry from what might be possible if we choose to fully develop the CODIAK alias collective mind capabilities.

What difference might this make, beyond the obvious orders of magnitude in efficiency and effectiveness?

Here's how Doug thought about this possibility, before he decided to dedicate his life's work to it: Our problems are becoming complex and urgent. We'll need a far better abilities to collaborate across physical and epistemic boundaries; and we'll need to think together and think fast. But this is exactly what the computer technology can in principle allow us to do – if we organise ourselves differently. 

More about this in the forthcoming blog post A collective mind - Part One.

Notice that the collective mind prototype we implemented as TNC2015 is still only doing a small fraction of the collective mind / CODIAK capabilities. There's really lots and lots more that can and needs to be done!