The handbook explains the term collective intelligence and why studying collective intelligence is important nowadays.Furthermore, it gives examples of collective intelligence in different environments as for instance: business organizations, computer science/A.I. and biology. The handbook deals with measuring collective intelligence and associated influence factors and more interesting, it lists several factors which either facilitate collective intelligence (e.g. diversity, incentives for contribution) or inhibit it (e.g. self-interest and the free-rider problem, implementation issues).

• Dr. Iyad Rahwan, Masdar Institute& MIT (www.mit.edu/~irahwan)
• Prof. Alex (Sandy) Pentland, MIT (http://web.media.mit.edu/~sandy)

The successful candidate will work on a collaborative interdisciplinary research project. The project , titled “Influencing Collective Human Behavior Using Distributed Intelligent Systems,” aims to help people use resources more efficiently. The project will have (1) a theoretical component focusing on game-theoretic and incentive mechanism design issues, and (2) an empirical component to test these techniques in behavioral experiments using lab experiments and real deployment through mobile computing and sensor technologies.

For further details, please see: http://www.mit.edu/~irahwan/docs/20100529_postdoc_advert.pdf