factors in collective intelligence

(from: Quora)
Collective intelligence has always been there.
Its most impeding factor, I think, always has been the constraints of information exchange. In time and place. These constraints have gradually been deminished by the introduction of script, book printing, mass media. But nowadays with internet and other communication technology these constraints can be neglected.

The impeding factor that now comes to surface is a harder nut to crack. This has to do with the difference between information and human knowledge.
Information can be assembled from a limited number of bits, letters, numbers etc. But the basic elements of human knowledge are concepts, visions, opinions, convictions, images, ideas. These are by no means limited and cannot be ordered in a logical manner.

So picking the elements of knowledge from the ocean (representing the collective), analogous to the way Google picks information from the internet, is not straightforward yet.

One way that should work is to organise information in the way the brain does.
That is to construct self reinforcing association tables between information elements.