Having seen how groups can obtain good results by accumulating their independent knowledge, as in the "The Wisdom of Crowds", how well can they do through concerted effort?
Can people in a crowd will a pong controller to move correctly? How is it possible to coordinate that many inputs into a sensible and effective output? Cinematrix has demonstrated that not only is it possible, but it is universal. Imagine my surprise, as I was holding a red colored reflecting paddle up in an audience of a couple hundred, to see the pong paddle move to strike the incoming ball, as a laser scanned over the audience, counting the responses and guiding the movement. It was truly amazing that just enough people in the audience raised their paddle to control the paddle movement on the large screen in front of us. Further demonstrations have included behavior as complex as controlling a flight simulator. Imagine the possibilities at larger scale, with finer grained control and training? While the accomplishments of crowd coordination to date don't amount to performance above that of a single trained human, it would be interesting to see results after the audience was given extensive training.
Cinematrix
