Platform and Collective Intelligence

Antoine Henry is a lecturer at the University of Lille, France, a researcher at the GERiiCO laboratory and a member of the GDR of the Centre Internet et Société (CNRS). He completed his PhD in information and communication sciences.

Introduction ix

Chapter 1. Organizations and Digital Technology 1

1.1. Organizations of the “information society” 2

1.2. Temporality of devices and organizations 5

1.2.1. Internal temporality of the devices and temporality of the organization 5

1.2.2. Permanent prototype deployment 6

1.3. ICT-enabled mediation 8

1.3.1. From IT to ICT 11

1.3.2. Action mediated by technical devices 13

1.3.3. ICT and quantophrenia 16

1.4. The transformation of organizations 18

1.4.1. Digital hybridization of organizations 21

1.4.2. Digital uses: tensions between private and professional life 22

1.4.3. Diversion of technologies 23

Chapter 2. The Platform Organization 27

2.1. Networking of the organization 29

2.1.1. Foundations of the reticular organization 30

2.1.2. A cybernetic reading of the organization 32

2.2. Platformization of organizations 33

2.2.1. Brief history of the platform 34

2.2.2. The specificity of platform capitalism: culture and use of data 35

2.2.3. Towards the construction of a “platform organization” 39

2.3. The platform state 40

2.3.1. The thinking of the State as a platform 41

2.3.2. The State, a platform like any other? 44

2.4. Platform and knowledge 48

2.4.1. Knowledge organization within the framework of the platform 49

2.4.2. Knowledge sharing and dissemination 50

Chapter 3. Sociotechnical Instrumentation of Collective Intelligence 55

3.1. Social instrumentation through digital technology 55

3.1.1. The organization’s sociotechnical project 58

3.2. Collective intelligence, an operating model for organizational transformation 62

3.2.1. Origin of the concept of collective intelligence 64

3.2.2. Instrumented collective intelligence 65

3.3. Collective action and analysis of the potential of collective intelligence 67

3.3.1. Setting up collective action 67

3.3.2. Collective action and organizational knowledge 69

3.3.3. Framework for analyzing the potential of collective intelligence 70

3.4. From communities to meta-organization 71

3.4.1. Communities of practice 72

3.4.2. Virtual communities 74

3.4.3. Towards virtual communities of practice 75

3.4.4. The construction of a meta-organization through communities 77

Chapter 4. Organization Experience 81

4.1. Organization through the prism of change 81

4.2. Sociotechnical device and catalyst for organizational transformations 83

4.2.1. Co-construction of sociotechnical devices 86

4.2.2. Towards an instrumental genesis of the organization 89

4.3. Organizational variations of collective intelligence 91

4.3.1. Collective intelligence and “glocal” logic 92

4.4. Intangible common goods 96

4.4.1. Internal use of non-rival goods 96

4.4.2. The use of the Web of Data for the provision of digital commons 98

Conclusion 101

Appendix 109

References 113

Index 139