The professors at De Montfort University Leicester, UK, have assembled a taskforce to predict the next Twitter-like big thing in social technology, with the aim resolving related ethical pitfalls before they become a problem. As outlined in their press release, “ETICA researchers will identify emerging technologies and will also decide how they are likely to be used. They will then list the ethical issues that are likely to arise from each possible application and devise a method to grade and rank them.”
Hmm, I’d venture that it’s statistically impossible that a few scientists working in isolation will chance upon the next big social networking trend and its sociological impact. Sorry guys. There are a bunch of studies, including a few mentioned in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point that indicate that a relatively uninformed crowd routinely out-predict a group of experts in a room.
The method to predict what’s next in social technology simply has to be social. Think about it – wouldn’t you want input from the people who would actually be using the stuff?
Here’s how it could work: The academic partners and advisory organizations on the project could pool the funding and human effort they have earmarked to create a crowdsourcing site where the world is invited into the discussion. Given the stakeholders span across the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Finland and Hungary – with students and members likely in the tens of thousands – they have a wide community ready to engage as a start. A series of calls to the crowd could be broadcast like: “What social networking technology do you wish existed today?” “What’s the biggest problem with today’s popular social technology?” and “What capabilities do you predict will drive the next big social connections?”
The crowd would contribute, discuss, vote on and rank the ideas in a series of showdowns that would distill down to the top 5 most-likely-to-succeed social technology ideas. From there call to the crowd to predict the ethical issues that the top 5 could entail. Again distill those submissions down through discussion, a vote and ultimate top 5 rank. Now you’d have 5 technology concepts, with 5 predicted ethical risks and you could do a final showdown to get the crowd to pick the top 2 technologies that they would use, buy, support and want to be in a world with given the ethical impact. DMU folks contact us if you’re intrigued!
Predicting “winning” technology is a proven use of crowdsourcing. Intel has been doing it for years, as have Apple, Dell and many others. There’s no method to remove all risk of taking new technology to market but crowdsourcing can increase product success rates substantially. And if you are Intel – the prediction also gets you introduced early to up-and-comers who you can invest in and pitch Intel inside.
Check out our scoring of Intel’s crowdsourcing.
Stay open!
