Collective wisdom is useful if each individual is doing the thinking. I read this book on the Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki back in December, 2009 and for me this explains a lot about how the web works.
Let me explain. We know that people updates their status online, googles for answers, blogs about their daily activities, read news or watch a dog skateboard. This is now getting to be common knowledge. However, there is another side we're not too familiar with or not even aware we are a part of: the online tools that we use and the voluntary efforts of people that benefits mankind.
reCAPTCHA Project photographically scans physical books and transforms the pages into text via OCR. What you didn't know is that every time you type in those squiggly words at the bottom of an online web form, you are helping archive human knowledge. For the detailed process, read this or listen to this episode of CBC's Spark.
Augmented reality is another initiative that provides one way of bringing experiential and location-based learning to students. Here's a story on the Toronto Museum Project using York University's Augmented Reality Lab.
Lastly, the TED Open Translation Project is an open-call to translators from around the world to help share their expertise in creating subtitles and transcripts of all the talks at TED.com. The translations will also help index video content so they can be searched by anyone worldwide (in all available languages).
See? We don't always write about what we had for lunch. Strength in numbers.
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