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I’m currently thinking a lot about participatory culture, especially in the context of large networks like the Internet and got to wondering: What if the wisdom of the crowds was used to help find the black boxes of Air France’s ill-fated flight 447? What if searchers set up a website that allows anyone to venture a guess about the missing data recorders’ latitude and longitude? It seems that, considering the large amounts of money, resources, and human effort that go into search efforts, setting up a website and eliciting the wisdom of the crowds could be a relatively simple and cheap addition to the efforts already being mounted..source: NTSB

In James Surowiecki’s fascinating book, The Wisdom of the Crowds, the author explains how, under the right circumstances, high quality information can be gleaned from individuals working independently and how this simple idea can have powerful results. In the book, we find various examples of how people from diverse backgrounds, having various levels of expertise, can often provide an aggregated result that’s better than anything created by the single most expert person in the group. Combinations of amateurs, novices and professionals using their own ideas, can predict, with amazing accuracy, the number of jellybeans in a jar or the weight of a bull. As far as I know, Surowiecki’s findings have not been applied to missing craft or missing people but it seems like maybe they should. I know that these ideas are being used with powerful results in prediction markets, policy decisions for companies and organizations, and in surmising where and when the next terrorist strike might take place, among others.

Surowiecki points out that in order to get the best possible results, certain criteria need to be met. There needs to be diversity of opinion. It seems like the Internet is perfect for this. Just read the comments on a blog, Digg or YouTube video. People’s opinions need to be independent. This would mean, in the case of a downed aircraft or missing person, only searchers would know the coordinates being guessed by participants. (Once the search is over, users’ predictions could be made public.) To achieve high quality results, there needs to be decentralization. Again, we’d be hard pressed to find a better example of decentralization than the World Wide Web. And last, there needs to be some mechanism which allows for the aggregation of submitted predictions. In the case of latitude/longitude data, this could be done with little effort.

Once the search effort is publicized, (which is easy enough to do via the Internet), participation, I believe, would be considerable–certainly large enough to allow this approach to potentially provide useful results. The World Wide Web 2.0 and the growth of participatory culture has shown us that people are willing to help each other due to intrinsic motivators, often for little more than occasional praise and the chance to gain some social capital. To tap into the motivating power of social capital and people’s need to be liked and feel appreciated, the supplier of the most accurate prediction (in the case of a successful search and rescue event) could be made known to all.

If you feel that this idea has legs, please share it with anyone who might be able to help put it into practice. If you know of any examples of the wisdom of the crowds being used in search and rescue, please make them known in comments below.