[iDC] looking for social media scholars ...

[Howe, Jeff]

Stephen

Excellent point and well received. In popularizing the phrase Wisdom of
Crowds Surowiecki made a valiant attempt to demonstrate that for a group to
act intelligently several conditions must be met, the foremost among them
that a) the group contains considerable diversity; which you note. But I
would add: b) the individuals within the group are able to act
independently, and thus avoid pitfalls like information cascades and the
various other social influences that can turn right-thinking minds into a
herd. In this sense Wisdom of the Crowds is a misleading phrase. In the last
18 months I've encountered a surprising degree of misunderstanding on this
point. Crowds are generally wisest when they are acting as a large group of
independently minded individuals.

But then as a rule many more people will absorb the soundbyte but fail to
read the book (whatever the subject).

I'm not sure if wisdom *does* emerge through consultation, conversation and
interplay. Certainly that can be the case, but group deliberation can often
result in decision-making that displays dramatically less intelligence and
knowledge than that possessed by an individual within the group. Cass
Sunstein does a nifty job of delineating various scenarios in which
deliberation fails to produce the desired effect, and why. The famous
example of this involves President Kennedy's military and foreign policy
advisers failing to raise an objection to the Bay of Pigs operation, despite
the fact that many of them believed it would end in failure. In fact, not
one (according to Sunnstein's telling) dissented.

Thanks, Jeff


On 10/3/07 7:35 PM, "Stephen Downes" <stephen at downes.ca> wrote:

> Hiya,
> 
> As an aside to the main avenue of enquiry (sorry)...
> 
> 'Voting' is a mass phenomenon. It depends on bulk - the side with the
> largest number of people saying the same thing. It's identity politics.
> 
> The 'wisdom of crowds' (for lack of a good term) is not a mass
> phenomenon. It does not depend on bulk; exactly the opposite. It depends
> on people saying different things, having diverse opinions, offering
> multiple points of view on the same subject. Decisions are not made by
> counting but through the interplay and conversations. What is decided is
> not 'stated' by one and then emulated or repeated by others - it is
> rather emergent from the set of diverse actions and opinions.
> 
> What the media scholars have to say may vary...
> 
> -- Stephen
> 
>   Howe, Jeff wrote:
>> iDCers, 
>> 
>> I've greatly enjoyed lurking on this list for the last several months, but
>> now I'm hoping you fine folk might help me identify anyone engaged in the
>> study of social media sites, aka Digg/Reddit etc. for a book I'm writing
>> about crowdsourcing. The chapter in question is a bit broader than social
>> media, per se, and is tentatively titled, The Crowd Votes. I'm interested in
>> the ways in which user feedback is influencing cultural production, as well
>> as the capacity to be hacked. Is this mob rule or the dawn of an empowered
>> consumerate or just a load of hype?
>> 
>> Very grateful for any responses, online or off.
>> 
>> Jeff Howe
>> 
>> ---------------------------
>> Jeff Howe
>> Contributing Editor, Wired Magazine
>> 4 Times Square, 19th Floor
>> New York, NY 10036
>> www.crowdsourcing.com
>> W: 212 286 5275
>> M: 917 992 6531
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity
>> (distributedcreativity.org)
>> iDC at mailman.thing.net
>> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
>> 
>> List Archive:
>> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>> 
>> iDC Photo Stream:
>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
>> 
>> RSS feed:
>> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
>> 
>> iDC Chat on Facebook:
>> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
>> 
>> Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref
>> 
>>   
>