Collective Intelligence or Collective Labor?

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I'm only about 1/2 way through Jenkins as of right now, so he may address some of my comments later in the book...but I'm more in the writing (less in the reading) kind of mood right now. Blogs are about moods, right?

I find it upsetting when theorists give up the question of resistance altogether and try instead to fashion some utopia out of the impoverished materials of the culture industry with which they find themselves surrounded. It's so...1990s.

Here's a polemical statement (but probably not too controversial): I find no way of sustaining any argument that posits some redemptive value in so-called "collective intelligence," because the very term is a category error. We are talking, instead, about collective labor. What is intelligent about collective intelligence? The individuals involved are using problem-solving skills, but this hardly qualifies as "intelligence." Shouldn't intelligence be on the side of the multitude, reserved for describing those activities which work against, or exit from, empire?

I wonder if there is some rhetorical work being done by the slippery and indiscriminate application of "intelligence" to the activities of both humans and machines. This becomes especially problematic in the term "collective intelligence," which designates instances in which humans perform tasks in networks that mimic the structure of machine networks, and which also generally refers to carrying out large-scale surveillance operations, data mining and sifting, and strategic coordination of resources. If the answer weren't so obvious, one might be tempted to ask: What is it that these machines are training us for? We live in a world where "intelligence" has been redefined by cognitive science, engineering and electronics. Perhaps the true political gesture today would be to return to Heidegger's question and ask "what is called thinking?" Heidegger writes: "Most thought-provoking in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking," and "This situation is grounded in the fact that science itself does not think, and cannot think--which is its good fortune, here meaning the assurance of its own appointed course. Science does not think. This is a shocking statement. Let the statement be shocking, even though we immediately add the supplementary statement that nonetheless science always and in its own fashion has to do with thinking. That fashion, however, is genuine, and consequently fruitful only after the gulf has become visible that lies between thinking and the sciences, lies there unbridgeably. There is no bridge here--only the leap" (372-73).

Heidegger demarcates two modes of mental activity: scientific research and thought. There is no bridge between them, and we should take note of this. We should also take note that the modes of mental activity common to "collective intelligences" lie decidedly on the side of science: classificatory, scopic, operational, surveillant, etc. I would not prescribe Heidegger as a political corrective to the messiness of the collective intelligence folks (Levy and Jenkins)--it wouldn't really make sense since Heidegger is writing about what falls under the purview of philosophy, not politics. I would suggest, however, that we be careful to differentiate between one kind of brain-work and another, because such distinctions are political.

P.S.--Google trends is the coolest thing ever.