ITR: Technology for Information Aggregation Mechanisms: The Rapid Collection and Aggregation of "Soft" Information Distributed Across Remotely Located Individuals and Groups

众所周知，相当多的信息是以“软”信息的形式存在的，例如分布在许多人身上的预感、意见、信念和期望。当个体在时间和空间上处于不同的位置，并从共同的来源以复杂模式的形式接收信号时，这些信息可以聚集成可靠的统计数据。用于提取这类信息的工具，称为信息聚合机制(IAM)，已经自然演变，但其成功的科学基础尚未得到探索。IAM涉及微妙之处，因为它们依赖于激励和个人通过观察他人来更新自己的观点/信念的能力。通过应用新的实验室实验方法，本研究将分离出导致成功的原则。然后，利用行为学原理以及现代通信和计算技术，这项研究将产生不同于任何自然发生的新类型的IAM。潜在的应用范围几乎遍及几乎任何复杂的系统，在这些系统中，对信息的需求是连续的或反复出现的，状态不是从任何单一的有利位置清楚地观察到的，并且观察需要人的解释。据推测，这将包括从流行病、悬而未决的系统故障、组织中复杂决策过程的结果或社会倾向等各种情况。

Considerable information is known to exist in the form of "soft" information such as the hunches, opinions, beliefs and expectations distributed across many individuals. When individuals are differentially located in time and space and receive signals in the form of complex patterns from a common source, such information can aggregate into a reliable statistic. Tools for extracting such information, called Information Aggregation Mechanisms (IAMs), have evolved naturally but the scientific foundation for their successes has not been explored. IAMs involve subtleties because they depend upon incentives and the ability of individuals to update their opinions/beliefs by observing others. Through the application of new laboratory experimental methods, this research will isolate the principles that lead to the successes. Then, using the behavioral principles together with modern communications and computational technology, the research will produce new types of IAMs unlike any that are found occurring naturally. Potential applications range widely across almost any complex system in which the need for information is continuous or reoccurring, the state is not clearly observed from any single vantage point and observation requires human interpretation. Presumably, this would include anything ranging from epidemics, pending systems failures, the outcome of complex decision processes in an organization, or social tendencies.