The Wisdom of Crowds

I am choosing to blog about The Wisdom of Crowds written by James Surdowiecki.   I had to read this book for a Group Dynamics class that I took in 2005—the Professor (who was excellent) used this as a springboard for the entire semester and the class had to work through creating instances for the main arguments throughout the book. 

There are two points that I remember in depth--mostly because they are the two items I reported on.  The first is Surdowiecki’s notion that under the right circumstances groups are extraordinarily intelligent, and are smarter than the smartest person in the group (I think in the video he spoke of this as even if a person knows less than someone else in the group, what they know is different).  I used the example of the show Survivor –the power of the “tribes” was most effective when everyone shared small bits of knowledge about a lot of things, and/or they shared a lot of knowledge about one thing and someone else shared another piece of knowledge about something else.  The power was in the group dynamics, not in one person.

The second idea I remember from his book was a little later in the book when he spoke about the importance of cooperation and trust.  I chose to focus on trust as a key element for a group’s success.  When individuals come together for a certain purpose, they bring their individual experiences and knowledge, but they also may carry uncertainty, insecurities, and fear to the group.  These aren’t necessarily negative features because they may lead to cautious awareness’s that need to be considered for success.

So, how do I apply all of this with online communities and social networks?  I think they are very similar in such instances such as Wikipedia and Facebook but an important difference is that people may be using the information to reach different goals and writers of the information do not know what these goals are.  Knowing where you wish to go and what you need to accomplish is an important element for success that should be considered from the very beginning, not made up as you go along.