Where do we go from here? Cognitive surplus,and changing the world

One of the most intriguing TED talks I watched some time ago was about cognitive surplus. It really changed how I view many things. When reflecting on all what I learned in this class, it came to my mind and I looked it up to find out that it was no other than Shirky himself who wrote Here Comes Everybody.

http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world.html

The concept is simple yet can truly change the world and make it a better place for everyone. I recall the number of cognitive surplus hours estimated to be around 1 trillion or so per year. If we all somehow aggregated this and mobilized it to serve mutually beneficial projects for all of humanity, we will all be better off, everyone of us. This class profoundly changed my views on many things, but this idea stands out for me. I think that most religions, philosophies, political and social movements that I can think of had such component in their agenda. Because they knew its intrinsic power. The only difference is that many times it was left in the abstract with no tangible way of taking action. But know we have it, technology. In addition to my idealistic dreaming of solving the UN Millennium’s goals which might be assisted by aggregating both the gaps in the current implementations and potential customized solution, there are more practical applications.

A concept I came across in one of my classes and I think ties well to this is “Games with a purpose.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_with_a_purpose

I think it's just fascinating on many levels. It’s aggregating usually “wasted” time and channeling it to solve problems that technology can't,leaving the burden on humans. One of the better known examples is Foldit http://fold.it/portal/ In which we play to solve puzzles about how proteins came to take their current shapes. This has numerous potential medical and therapeutic applications due to understanding the protein’s structure.

Another similar one is Phylo in which you play to try and decode genetic diseases.

This is all while we are technically still playing a game which makes it a great concept in my opinion.

In a world where recourses are getting scarcer and our problems larger and more complex, leveraging cheap technology to aggregate the cognitive surplus of the world will soon be inevitable. It can help us with medical access for sub-Saharan African countries who have more native doctors in Chicago than in their countries. It can help us in solvingn poverty and hunger. Combining micro finance with online networks was such a great way, but much more is needed. If I exagurate enough, the solution to all our problems are within our hands, we just need to find which exact hands.

In a truly globalized, connected and small world, aggregating knwoeldge has never been easier nor more important. I'll make sure to carry this knowledge along with all other ideas I took from this class to make myself a better person, and then maybe do something more...

So is it all just biology? Our Social networks and underlying neural mechanisms

When I hear about empirical social and psychological studies, I always like to think that it has a neural implication. It allows me to think that human can at some level of research by truly understood, but of coruse we all know that’s not possible. Last semester I got involved in a field called neuroeconomics. It combines the main theories of decision making in psychology and economics with neuroimaging to hopefully make sense of what we do. There is some progress albeit quite slow, especially about decisions pertaining to risk and uncertainty, but I think we are finally in the right direction. We need to "aggregate our fields of knowledge." Please see my wiki article (yep.. doing my aggregation part!) .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroeconomics

Throughout this semester, the amazing blend of social and psychological theory kept me always wondering and reexamining the nature of my reality (networks, homophily, diversity, contagion, small worlds, weak ties, polarization, cascades, collective aggregation,..). But more importantly, my second question was, as always, is there a biological basis for this. There is actually research ongoing right here at NU trying to ask this very question. The results were published in Nature Neuroscience.

http://www.northeastern.edu/news/stories/2011/01/social_brain.html.

I also later found it published in my favorite psychology today.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/choke/201102/when-it-comes-our-social-networks-brain-size-matters

The basic finding is that the volume of a brain structure called the amygdala was found to be correlated with the size of one’s social network . It was known that primates who live in larger social groups have larger amygdalas, and now this has been confirmed in humans.

They gathered the network data similar to many studies we read in class, by asking particiapnts about their contacts, how strong they are and to what groups they belong. They found the same results even after controlling for brain and body size. Of course this brings the question of causation. Is it the amygdala that is causing the large social network, or is it the later enlarging the amygdala?

I like how this ties to what Christakis proposed at the beginning of his book, and how our location in the network affects us, but we also affect our network.

I wonder if we can answer many of the intriguing concepts in this course with similar studies.

-Why do some people have more weak ties than others?

-are some people more prone to social cascades?

-can certain groups be genetically inclined to polarization

-Why do some ideas/behaviors diffuse through networks while others don’t?

There might already be answers out there for these that I’m not aware of, and there is always the possibility that some things just can’t put be tested in a lab, and so we might never know the causality. In either case, it keeps me wondering, and I enjoy that!

Parting Thoughts

In the last four months, I have learned more about networks than I have the last four years that I have been on Facebook. Studying networks that existed before the internet existed was especially eye-opening. I always thought that networks begun with sites like Myspace, but people before the internet used more manual methods of viewing network connections, and some of the network graphs that were made pre-internet are astounding to look at.

I really like that we had the freedom to research and write about whatever we wanted to. I was able to learn a lot more about topics which I'm passionate about. This class gave students the opportunity to interpret its content in their own ways, while discussing their views amongst others. One of my favorite topics we learned about was Swarm Theory. We learned that a seemingly unintelligent individual, when grouped with a swarm of others, can collectively combine their knowledge to optimize their ordinary tasks. With this mindset, ants were able to solve the Towers of Hanoi and bees could solve the Travelling Salesman problem.

I have learned to incorporate the knowledge from this class into my daily life. For example, I use Swarm Theory to better understand how members of websites think together, I use open sourcing, like Wikipedia, to better understand how Linux and Android work, and I use contagion to think about why so many people smoke and drink at Northeastern and why it spreads. This class has given me a new perspective on life by changing how I view the world.

My Thoughts on Procrastination

I have had problems with procrastination nearly all of my life. I often save work to the last minute not only because I would rather not do it, but mostly because I am much more motivated to complete tasks as the due date approaches closer and because my focus is higher, allowing me to generally complete work much faster if I'm working closer to a deadline. As the internet skyrockets in popularity, more and more people are finding new and improved distractions rather than completing work in a timely fashion. Therefore, in an effort to reduce procrastination, I offer two general suggestions to students and professors:

1: Assign more regular due dates for assignments. I feel that if work was assigned in smaller, more regular chunks, overall procrastination will decline. I believe that students would be less inclined to waste time on smaller assignments since they know that they will be able to finish faster than a larger assignment. For example, rather than having weekly homework over the week's lessons, teachers could assign problems each class period only on the day's lessons. From experience, I would much rather do three Thermodynamics problems a night, knowing there are only three left, rather than do nine problems on Sunday night.

2: Assign more group assignments and encourage students to work in groups whenever possible. I am much less inclined to waste time in a group scenario, especially when group members are relying on you to finish your section in time. I had a situation earlier in the semester where one of my Material Science lab group members did not complete his section of the lab until 10 P.M. the day before it was due, and since it was my job to compile and format all of the sections as well as write the abstract, I could not start my task without his work. On a normal assignment, working only with myself, I typically am not worried if I don't start until 10 P.M., but in a group situation, there is a certain stigma that appears if you let your team members down, as you have a group reputation to hold. While working in groups, I have seen that members are typically more encouraged to finish faster than if they had to work alone.

If due dates were assigned more regularly and group projects occurred more often, then I believe that students would tend to procrastinate less.

General Thoughts

At the end of our class on Wednesday, we went around the room and all shared one thing that we have learned from this class. There were a variety of different answers and it seemed as if almost everyone had something unique they were going to take from the class. The varied answers that were given by the class led me to start to think about the many different fields of study that correspond to some of the themes of the class. When looking back at my notes and the syllabus with all of the different readings, it became clear that the things I learned from this class can be applied to everything. Knowing specific network effects makes someone think more about their connections and how they will connect with the others around them. Since the start of this class I have found myself to think more about the possible effect of making a connection with a certain person or group. It is not something to obsess over, but it can certainly be helpful to think about.

The themes of this class can also be applied to any field of study. Knowledge on networks can be relevant in business, engineering, healthcare, politics, and many other areas. This was reflected in our syllabus as we had readings from a variety of different fields. When I first signed up for the class I didn’t expect to be reading a book about bees, but I found the book to be both interesting and useful. I think the interdisciplinary aspect of the class and network study in general is very beneficial. No matter what job I have, I feel I will be able to apply the themes of this class in some way. Having said that, I think society could benefit if more people had a basic understanding of networks. For example, politics on every level could be more efficient and balanced if more people understood some of the themes of the class. People could also be mentally and physically healthier if they knew the effect that people in their network had on them.

An information cascade in real life

I was standing in line for a concert over the weekend. Due to the physical limitations of the area, the line was entirely on the opposite side of the street from the venue, and a little further down the block. A group of people came running from somewhere near the end of the line (which most people couldn't see from where they were, and which no one was really paying attention to, heading directly toward the venue. Everyone in line immediately wanted to know what was happening and whether these people were disobeying the social norms of the line and trying to gain some kind of advantage.

While waiting in line for concerts, many people are with friends already, or they form temporary friendships to pass the time. As a result, the overall order of the line was maintained even though many people also ran toward the venue to investigate - only one person from each group needed to go.

The incident turned out to have absolutely nothing to do with the order of the line, but instead with its length (an abutting property owner took exception to our presence on "their" sidewalk), and the people from the rear of the line resumed their original place as soon as they received guidance from venue staff. But without the social bonds formed in the context of the long wait before the concert (through which groups could send one representative to figure out what had happened while the rest stayed in place and allowed the scout to return to her previous position), the entire line could have been destabilized.

Thoughts on Homophily

I believe that the idea of homophily was one of the most interesting ideas studied in this class. When we were first learning about it, I thought that homophily would be something that impedes diversity. I have come to realize that while it can separate networks into segments of like-minded people, thus making close networks less diverse, it also can be used as a tool to learn new things and broaden interests and viewpoints. For example, lets say a friend of mine and I both really enjoy reading science fiction books. If he recommends something from a different genre, lets say a memoir, I would be much more likely to read it than if someone who doesn’t share my immediate interests recommends it to me. Another example comes from my own experience. I used to dislike rap and hip-hop a lot in high school; I listened to mostly rock, and then some electronic music as well. When I got to college and found friends who listened to similar things, one of them introduced me to some hip-hop artists that he really enjoyed. I ended up really liking it, and I don’t think that I would have listened to it with as open of a mind had it been recommended by someone who listens solely to hip-hop. Since then, my music tastes have been expanded greatly by my friends around me whose tastes I can trust. Similarly, with politics, I tend to associate with left-leaning people. If one of my friends started arguing against some policy that Obama had enacted, I most likely be more open to it and listen more closely than if someone who is right-leaning brought it up. This idea may not be optimal, but it is the way the human brain works. Therefore, homophily should not only been seen as something that segments networks, but also as a catalyst for expanding interests and ideas across similar people.