ISV Kaizen

Being a software vendor is a fantastic job. Meeting interesting people with out-of-the-box vision is one of the most attractive sides of my job.

Today, I’m happy to introduce you an interview with Balam J. Abello. Balam is a talented engineer, futurist, writer, and IT consultant with many years of extensive experience in such revolutionary corporations like IBM and American Express. Currently, Balam is researching a concept of Collective Intelligence in a modern society. I convince you to visit his site www.balam.org to read more about Balam’s works and ideas. Let’s speak about how the concept of Collective Intelligence may affect the information technologies.

Balam, could you please explain a key idea of Collective Intelligence concept in several words?
At the crux of CI is the idea that under certain circumstances a “diverse” and preferably large of group people are often more accurate than a single individual; even if this individual is an expert. This is particularly true in the case of complex systems.

In a nutshell, Collective Intelligence uses the aggregate opinions from groups of diverse and independent people to apply it to several types of problems, one of which is the decision making process.

Did this concept exist earlier or it’s a product of the modern technological society?
This concept has existed before. In fact, one could even say that it has been around since the beginning of cellular organisms which is about 3.5 billion years. As a scientific discipline CI became of age in the 20th century. But in the past couple of decades, CI has come into view. This means that a lot of the theoretical postulates have come true on the Internet.

What convinces people to participate in collaborative projects which are mostly non commercial? This is hardly an opportunity to get paid.
Perhaps idea that all human activities should seek financial rewards as its main raison d’être is a distortion from past human history. This perception has reached unprecedented proportions during the past 300 years and especially during that last 50 years with the advent in some cases, of unbridle depredatory capitalism.

Collaboration is at the heart of human behavior. Mathematics, language, music, farming and culture, to name a few, are huge collaborative efforts. Let’s not forget that the Internet is proof positive of daunting and massive collaborative efforts.

This question has been asked a lot in regards not just to CI but more importantly about the Open Source movement. People derive all kinds of altruistic and non-altruistic benefits from collaboration which are not necessarily monetarily driven. Although, this does not preclude that for many people their motives are driven by a monetary reward and this is fine too.
Lastly, I content that as people become more educated, e.g. acquire more knowledge, there will be a tendency to work for the common good which is counter to traditional predatory practices, which in many case have been responsible for the “tragedy of the commons.”
But let me make it clear that I don’t argue against making a profit. After all my IT consultancy practice has a lot to do with this. Additionally, major corporations throughout the world are looking into CI as a means to further their enterprises in an ever more complex world.

You believe in the society that relies on Collective Intelligent, not on leaders, elite or governors. What about moderators, administrators and super users who significantly affect the work of almost any existent collaborative project? Isn’t it the same untrue Democracy?
Let me say that I look forward to a society that relies more onto itself with a lot less blind obedience to a leadership hierarchy. But my position is not black and white which means that I don’t see an absolute necessity of leaderless groups. What I think could or might happen is that these power hierarchies are going to be flatten significantly, thus reducing, but not eliminating the need for “command-and-control.”

It is quite clear that there will continue to exist an ever increasing need for moderators which I prefer to call “mentors” as well as administrators and a great number of other functions too. My thesis is that these “leaders” people should not have extreme power to decide the group’s agenda. These people should act more as consultants to their organizations thus creating a little more separation between self-interests and desired outcomes. If we talk about teamwork we should try, in as much as possible to create an atmosphere where members all are encouraged to have a voice and prevent the group from falling prey to “groupthink.”

However, when it comes to democracy, it is quite apparent that throughout history the will of the people, which is usually less drastic or extreme than that of individuals, is hardly ever really taken into account. Many campaigning politicians pay only “lip-service” to the people during election cycles. As soon as the “leaders” are elected they go ahead and do precisely what they want and this is sometimes the opposite of what the people, who voted for them, wanted in the first place. And, this seems to be a universal phenomenon. So I don’t criticize any given country or institutions for this behavior. Instead I look at it from the “systemic” point of view and realize that if any changes are to take place then these should occur at the “systems” level. In this case, practical approaches toward CI implementations might really help.

Do you believe in Web 3.0? What could it be?

Yes I believe that WEB 3.0 will be a major contributor to change. In fact we are in the middle of implementing WEB 3.0 environments but this will:

• Take anywhere from 5 to 10 years to implement
• Will not be readily visible to the standard user
• Will generated huge benefits bringing a higher order of Artificial Intelligence to the masses.

You could think of WEB 3.0 as the plumbing necessary for the water (intelligent information and knowledge) to flow. In other words, getting most of the billions of web sites to start adding the necessary tags (taxonomies) necessary for computer-programs-and-sites to automatically talk to each other creating the possibility for personalized intelligent avatars or agents, will take some time.

What kind of software applications or IT systems are worth developing while awaiting for Collective Intelligence to get hold?
Now, this is a very difficult question to answer. But my suspicion is that there is a huge universe of possibilities. What is interesting is that as I answer these questions there are probably thousands upon thousands of people experimenting new ideas for such applications. This creative-ecosystem is thriving.

Nevertheless, one trend is for IT applications to be more and more custom oriented versus massively standardized applications. Niche markets seem to be one strong trend.

What will be the main trends in technological and informational progress for humanity?
Once again this is a very difficult question to answer. Personally, I feel that all possibilities are open for expression. I try to think not so much linearly e.g. cause-and-effect when it comes to future trends. This makes any kind of prediction so much more difficult and consequently prone to error.

I will say that I believe that from the information / knowledge point of view, we are creating a “global-super-brain” which is already having profound effects upon all peoples in the planet. Furthermore, I also believe that the future will be extremely transparent. Secrets will tend to disappear on the web. And we see this already happening.

For example, when it comes to political candidacies, with just a few mouse clicks we can find out just about anything about prospective candidates; including such things as their voting records and all kinds of personal information which would allow us, to make informed decisions.

A special final question for our audience: What advantages and techniques of Collective Intelligence concept can be adopted and applied by a one-man shop software vendor (microISV) or by a small software development team?

The increased power of technological tools allows small groups of individuals or even single individuals to achieve great projects. A case in point is the history of Linux. Let’s remember that a single individual created the kernel for Linux and the first thing that he did was to released to the general public for it to do as it pleased and as a byproduct for people to help him fix Linux’s bugs. This was the case of a single individual taking advantage of the “Collective Intelligence” of large numbers of people. The end result has been a whole new multibillion dollar industry.

Therefore, a microISV could organize his or her software project to leverage the power of the people, which in computer science could equate to massive parallelism. Additionally, the techniques of WEB 2.0 collaboration are very well defined and have proven to work successfully. These techniques are also available to the microISV, today.

Thank you, Balam!

I invite everyone to visit Balam’s site www.balam.org to learn how to collaborate for a better World.