Distributed Intelligence Technologies: present and future applications

This paper surveys a wide variety of potential applications of distributed intelligence technologies. These are systems that tackle complex challenges in a distributed manner, by collecting, processing and routing information and actions that are spread across a global network of human and technological agents. The eventual integration of all these systems is expected to produce a distributed intelligence at the planetary scale, the Global Brain. Supporting technologies for such distributed problem solving include Wikipedia, the Semantic Web, the Internet of Things and the Smart Grid. These and future extensions will facilitate the propagation and coordination of information, knowledge, energy, physical objects, actions and personal identity. By extrapolating from existing applications such as social media, data mining, online shopping and MOOCs, it is argued that these technologies can in principle satisfy all our material, health, safety, social, achievement, cognitive, and even self-actualization needs.

ISBN:978-981-3108-96-7

Publication year:2017

Accessibility:Open