Blog #7 - The Wisdom of crowds

Blog post #7.

“The wisdom of crowds”

In James Surowiecki’s “Wisdom of Crowds”, he talks about the effectiveness of the decentralization of information where the collective knowledge of a group proved to be an effective tool for information gathering and sharing. Once we recognize and accept the power of group knowledge we will be able to make better predictions about markets, governments, people and our world and the way we share this information, he notes. This decentralized system he says enables equal participation from everyone to offer solutions to fix a problem or system and thereby make it better. Surowiecki likened this system to the Linux, where anyone and everyone who know(s) about computer programming can literally go into Linux and fix a problem or simply write a code that will enable the system to work better. Therefore, the more experts we have working on the same problem the more effective it can become since there is no reliance on a single arm to produce the intelligence, rather an interdependence on everyone who has the knowledge.

             This decentralization seems to be effective and can be considered similar to how social networks such as facebook or twitter, as well as blogger sites operate, where the “crowd” will offer insights based on what they “know” and this information aggregated to determine the best solution.  In the same way the decentralization is a form of the multimodal composition writing where the ideas have become decentralized from the traditional ABC style of compositioning to becoming inclusive of media text—the crowd texts, although still maintaining the centralized aspects of composition that is through form and structure. 

             According to Surowiecki decentralization encourages independence and specialization as well as allowing people to coordinate their activities and solve difficult problems (71) without a henchman to restrict idea sharing. This he said can be accomplished anywhere and by any “crowd” through a balance of making individual knowledge globally and collectively useful while still allowing it to remain resolute (72). In a sense, it proved to be decentralization within a centralized unit. As with any new technology or a great idea, the unknown always generate fear which have tendency to squash great ideas or stagnate their pace forward.  Any limiting of information sharing because of “fear” is even more detrimental to a system because it was never tested to prove its frailty or its strengths.

            The “Wisdom of crowds” is no different. Many critics believed that there could no great accuracy resulting from a group due to its diversity and varying knowledge base. Groups were cited as often unruly and dysfunctional. As (Bernard Baruch, Introduction xv), points out that “anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable until he becomes a member of the crowd; he becomes a blockhead”. However, Galton in his experiments with groups later stumbled on the simple but powerful truth that “groups are remarkably intelligent and are often smarter that the smartest people in them” (11).  And that we should really not rely so much on expert ideologies but should rather go the crowd.

            “Cognitive surplus” also overshadows the claim Surowiecki and Galton made with regards to the effectiveness of “the wisdom of crowds”. He cited that that it was not until the industrialization came about in  London when there was a great increase in literacy and education—when there was a huge increate in the number of people paid to think that  they were able to solutionize the gin craze.  He figured that most of the time what we think is the actual problem such as consuming to much gin or watching too much TV is not the actual problem but in retrospect are the reactions to the social problems that people are faced in our society. For e.g. If the economy is down, there tend to be less money in peoples’ pockets and they are less likely to go out. Going out means spending money, therefore people are tied to their homes watching TV. Although, this seems detrimental to societal norms, it is not all negative, it becomes a “social construction of knowledge” (9) because marketing and advertising firms are able to extrapolate what people – “the crowd” are watching and effectively use the information to keep capitalism alive. We can then conclude that the internet and television watching generate the biggest crowd and therefore the best solutions to any problem.