Crowdsourced placemaking – charted

Thanks to the geniuses at ThinkStudio that brought us the direct economy matrix, we’re able to provide a chart that better explains what crowdsourced placemaking is, when people have a direct hand in shaping their built environment.

As in the direct economy matrix, the x-axis represents progressive levels of interactivity, and the y-axis displays progressive levels of knowledge, as explained in The creative economy = the ‘direct economy”. Notice how raw data really doesn’t add up to anything, while true tangible results only happens at the interactivity level of co-creation involving collective intelligence and resources, and the knowledge level of logic, when you understand enough of something that you can capture this into a logical model (e.g. Wikipedia’s structure) that produces tangible results.

The direct economy is where “customer knowledge is replacing producer knowledge”. ThinkStudio illustrates this economic model through the two dimensions of interactivity and knowledge.

The five progressive levels of interactivity:
1. Passive – Listening to music, surfing the web.
2. Self service – eBay, Amazon, iTunes.
3. Do-it-yourself – IKEA, mixing music.
4. Co-design – Wikipedia, blogs.
5. Co-creation – Linux, open source, crowdsourcing.

The five progressive levels of knowledge:
1. Raw data - “19.“
2. Information - “19 degrees Celsius, a temperature”
3. Classification/categorization - “Weather in Geneva in January”
4. Process/time - “The temperature range in Geneva in January over the past 50 years.“
5. Logic - “Recognizing that it is has never been this warm in Geneva in January allows us to understand that this might be the result of global warming. And if we understand the logic of this process, we might be able to model it mathematically, thus leading to prediction of future temperatures or some form of automation.“

To reach the level of creative enthusiasm, that’s about heading to the top right of the chart… and the future of our economy and culture.  With the basics of the direct economy explained, we can delve deeper into how we can individually make this happen locally. Stay tuned.

Read more about the direct economy via ThinkStudio’s resource page.