The rise of collective intelligence

I'm in the process of reading the report from a workshop (July-Aug 2007) on "The Rise of Collective Intelligence: Decentralized Co-creation of Value as a new paradigm for commerce and culture" from the Aspen Institute's Communications and Society program
A few elements of interest:

• the examples used for the wisdom of crowds: baseball fans collectively manage a baseball team in the US...it fails (why?); 1000s collectively play Gary Kaspraov online (Kasparov wins, but he does state it was the hardest game of his life); Wikipedia; "We are smarter than me" book created as a wiki, but only 12 people actually contribute substantially;
• Open education/learning: John Seely Brown sees this period as the perfect storm from incredible advances to happen in the educational area ("major transformations in fundamental processes of education"); the OER movement, eScience and eHumanities and web 2 are converging for the perfect storm; education couyld be reinvented in ways that foster collaboration and participation on a global scale. This is a field we need to keep our eye on. Ito notes many wikipedians are outcasts from the traditional education system but have become "bookworms for the common good"
• Cloud computing: changes in technology towards cloud computing will transform business from a push mass market world to a pull micro world. The importance is leveraging network effects and the long tail at the same time. Amazon, google and eBay charaterise this new world. Coleman sees the rise of cloud computing spurring the end of the IT industry (software industry won't exist as Foss is seen as good enough). The cloud will also threaten the powers of nation states, govts, IP etc...therefore new institutional arrangements are needed.
  

The report raises important issues for us to be thinking about when trying to program in the area of ICT4D, particularly when thinking about what decentralised co-creation means for development. Much of the discussion on peer-production, cloud computing, OER, etc, is based on ubiquitous networked societies, but what does it need for the unconnected? Will a mobile suffice to become a co-creator or connect to the cloud?