When thinking about aggregation, another definition of the term came to mind. In the construction industry, aggregate is a noun and refers to coarse material that serves as reinforcement to add strength to the overall composite material to which it is added.
In the information field, when we say aggregate, we are referring to the categorization and consolidation of disparate and dispersed information objects. If you take from the first definition and add to the second, you end up with the altered idea that the categorization and consolidation of information in the service of the creation of a learning environment can add strength to the overall composition of the material. One of my professor’s mantras is “the organization of information creates new information.” This is also at the heart of all of the 2.0 mindset that we’ve been talking about throughout this course. It is an interesting and valuable perspective.
The other point I would like to make is that it seems like when we aggregate information from a crowdsource, that we are actually aggregating the people who create the information in the first place. We cannot separate the information from the people even if the people are anonymized in the process.