Zoref - Mindsharing : the art of crowdsourcing everything

Today, social networks are mostly about sharing moments. In the next decade, theyll also help you answer questions and solve complex problems.

MARK ZUCKERBERG, 2014

L eo had a fever and a rash. His mother, Deborah, wasnt overly alarmed. Kids get sick all the time and fevers can come and go in a four-year-old boy. It was a Sunday and Mothers Day. The last thing Deborah wanted to do was spend the day in a waiting room, but she still dutifully took Leo to the pediatricians office for an emergency visit.

From the waiting room, Deborah updated her Facebook status: Nothing says Happy Mothers Day quite like a Sunday morning at the pediatrician. After examining Leo, the doctor diagnosed strep and gave Leo a prescription for antibiotics. Deborah updated her status on Facebook once again. Strep. No Biggie.

A few days later, Leos condition had worsened. The antibiotics didnt seem to be working, and as they waited for the results of yet another throat culture, Deborah took a picture of Leo looking miserable on the examining room table. She posted his photo on her Facebook wall and updated her status once again. Baby getting sicker. Eyes swollen shut. Fever rising. Penicillin not working. Might be Scarlet fever. Or Roseola. Or... ???? Sigh.

Deborah received many comments of support, and best wishes, and hopes for a speedy recovery for Leo. The next day she posted another picture of Leo, this time from home with his trusty stuffed bear at his side. This status read: Swelling worse, especially eyes and chin. Fever still crazy high. Poor baby.

Some people suggested he might have an allergy. Some said it must be scarlet fever. Others told her not to worry and offered hopes for a diagnosis soon. The crowd tried to provide their support as best they could. Many were parents themselves, and knew just how frightening it is to have your child sick and be helpless to do anything about it.

Soon after this last post, Deborah received a call from a Facebook friend who had been following her posts. Stephanie wasnt a doctor, but a mother, and she shared with Deborah that her son had had the exact same symptoms, and ended up being hospitalized for Kawasaki disease, a rare and often fatal illness. You have to get to the hospital, Stephanie insisted. The longer you wait, the worse the damage.

Deborah found her inbox filled with private messages. Two more Facebook friends, pediatricians, also suggested Kawasaki disease, and urged Deborah to take Leo to the hospital immediately.

In a little more than an hour, three different people suggested that Leo might have this very rare and fatal condition. Without having a name for it at the time, Deborah was engaging in Mindsharing. Deborah was turning to the wisdom of her crowd, her social network, and by her doing so, Leos life was saved. In a blog post about her experience, Deborah wrote, Was I consciously trying to find an answer out there in the hive mind? No, but some subconscious part of me must have been wondering whether one of my hundreds of friends might be privy to some expertise on the befuddling Nutty Professor syndrome that had my child in its grips.

After rushing Leo to the hospital and confirming the diagnosis from her crowd, Deborah told the pediatrician about the crowds diagnosing Kawasaki disease. His response? Bravo Facebook. Deborah knew that her status updates, posted photos, and the collective wisdom of her crowd had saved her sons life.

Was Deborahs experience a fluke? Was it nothing more than a fortuitous mixture of fate and luck aligning at just the right time to save a four-year-old boys life? Or had Deborah, by chance and by a mothers desperation, stumbled upon one of the most powerful resources available to us all?

MAKE BETTER DECISIONS

We all struggle to make the best decisions possible when it comes to our careers, finances, parenting, health, and relationships. But what if we could make every important decision with the help of the smartest people in the world? It might sound impossible, but its not. All of us have the ability to access the collective wisdom of hundreds or even thousands of people who together are as smart as any expert adviser.

Making the right decisions is tough. Whenever we have an important decision to make, it can be difficult to put our feelings aside and make a rational and objective choice. Any emotion can affect our decision making, often long after the emotional incident has passed. A research study published by Eduardo Andrade and Dan Ariely shows that even the influence of mild incidental emotions on decision making can live longer than the emotional experience itself.we make future decisions. And the kicker is, we arent even aware of it at the time. Someone cuts you off in traffic on your way to work and, much later in the day, you reject a business offer thats been in the works for weeks. You may not even think of the traffic incident ever again, but that fleeting annoyance, that surge of emotionally driven anger at the other driver, can affect your business decisions, or your personal decisions, and you wont even realize it.

When we reach out to the crowd for wisdom, we are able to access decision-making skills that are free of our own emotion. We are able to seek out the solutions to our problems and weigh our choices free of the bias intrinsic to unilateral decision making. If we learn to rely on and trust the wisdom of the crowd, our decisions will be better, quicker, and easier. There is a power in crowd wisdom, and this power is harnessed through technology and social media. The crowd (specifically, Aya Shapir, a young marketing professional in my crowd) has named this power Mindsharing. And while it may sound like some futuristic version of a