Collective Intelligence in Design

In their introduction to this issue, Christopher Hight and Chris Perry define the idea of collective intelligence in its relationship to design practice and to broader technological and social formations. First they suggest a reformulation of practices around networked communication infrastructures as conduits for the new orchestrations of power that Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt detailed in their books Empire and Multitude. They then describe how such practices are often involved in the development of responsive sensing environments as new sites for manifesting the social organisations and communities made possible via telecommunications and the Internet. Lastly, they address how traditional boundaries of design disciplines and knowledge, from architecture to programming, are opening into complex co-minglings of their respective isolated intelligences into collectives capable of engaging these new sites, new briefs and new sorts of projects.