Meeting of the Mind

Much of the stream of this blog’s consciousness touches on James Surowiecki’s book (summary available.)  The core of it are the four conditions that characterize wise crowds:

• Diversity of opinion: each person should have some “private,” i.e., unique, information, even if that “information” is an opinion

• Independence: people’s opinions not determined by other people’s opinions

• Decentralization: people specialize and draw on local knowledge

• Aggregation: some method of turning private judgments into collective decision (example: stock market)

If those are taken fully and honestly into account, much of the criticism and dismissal of the book (bloggers and young consultants impart revelations that “wisdom of crowds is a load of crap” and “it depends on the crowd” to this day (the book was published in 2004)) can itself be dismissed. These four conditions are important because this blog cites the wisdom of crowds only when it does work.

For Surowiecki’s principle to work well, people must work in isolation, and there must be an effective aggregation (vote tabulating and processing) mechanism (other than people coming together socially to discuss and influence each other’s opinions).  Obviously the latter is easier said than done, and the details of the mechanism can make or break the priniciple in that situation.  Only if these conditions are met will the wisdom of crowds principle work powerfully.

From the Student as Scholar blog, a .ppt file (OpenOffice Presentation, or Microsoft PowerPoint, if you like capitalist software).  Note especially the slides entitled, “Class collaboration challenges” about the physical issues getting in the way of pure frictionless collaboration; and “Virtual science library ideas” about offering library services in a virtual environment.  The authors’ idea is not to “re-create physical library buildings in a virtual space! [exclamation point original]“  Fine, but where does the spatial model of organizing cognition break down, i.e., isn’t it beneficial to visualize categories or processes in different “rooms”?

A project of the Institute for the Future of the Book, MediaCommons is envisioned as changing the spirit of peer review from “gatekeeping” to collegial support.  Authors can manipulate who sees their creations in this “greenhouse.”  There are metrics, so cold hard reality isn’t really that far away.  But what would a work nurtured in such a protected environment look like when released to the polluted air and non-organic diet of the real world?  Getting out of my league here, but might there be a parallel to the system of human education dedicated to protecting children’s self-esteem to the point of nobody ever losing or hearing a negative thing said about them?

Parisian neighbours meet online, BBC story about Peuplade, putting urban denizens in touch with each other, since close geographical proximity alone does not get diverse people talking with each other.

Are city environments necessary?  Probably, Slashdotters say.  Richard Florida suggests so in Rise of the creative class : and how it’s transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life. He’s the one who posits a correlation between the “gay index” and the “high-tech index,” which is of course disputed by straight people who point to productivity in sterile suburban research parks full of white male patriarchalists (who do respect new ideas.  Up to a point.)  But some kind of permeability of boundaries seems to be necessary for social networking to build innovative and technical productivity.

No question mark after the phrase, because it’s actually a Web page on the Cognitive Neuroscience Arena site.

The CII blog out of UIUC is a little reminiscent of what Alan Shaw was trying to do twenty years ago with MUSIC (Multi-User Sessions In Community). MUSIC didn’t seem to take off—people thought, why log into a computer (pre-Web) when they could just pick up the phone. (Kind of like workers presented with wikis to collaborate on—why fool with that unituitive interface when they could just exchange dozens of e-mail messages, but I digress.) Actually, the “community” of CII refers more to online communities organized around specific goals. To quote their site, “The core of the CII is community inquiry: collaborative action to create knowledge and technology connected to people’s values, history, and lived experiences; the development of models of engagement that are just, democratic, participatory, and open-ended; and the integration of theory and practice in an experimental and critical manner.”