average is excellence
Surowiecki starts out with examples of misbelief during time about that any wisdom could come out of a crowd, and a fear of collecticve madness. A fear I can recognice from parents horrified that their teenager will be a part of a youth gang. A crowd, a group of people, no indication that it would be any kind of criminal gang.
Surowiecki points out that for a group to come to its right, and be wiser than its most intelligent members, it is required that the group is large enough, diverse, and that the members are autonomous.
The law often use the jury system so that people's common sense should have their say. In Sweden it is in the district court politically appointed Lay Judges (nämndemän) who fills that function. But when it comes to diversification among this Lay Judges is lacking badly. SvD reports that the average age is 57 years old, and more than half are over 50 years old (figures from 2007). The group's ability to adjudicate in a manner that reflects the ideals of the society at large, especially in cases where traditional norms are broken, or when modern technology is involved, are questioned.
For the decision making process to be successful, the individuals have to act autonomous, - to take on personal responsibility for their decisions and not hide behind the group. It is important that they speak their opinion, not what they think other wants to hear. Too excessive desire to reach a consensus may prohibit individuals to bring uncomfortable viewpoints to the table, and will lead to group think. Group think is a process making the group a lot dumber then its most stupid individual, by ignoring to critically evaluate and analyze the consequences the desicion will have. Se also cover-your-ass security.
As human beings we have a tendency to belive that if lots of people does something or belives in a certain thing, this is right or good for something. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. The tendency to belive so howewer is called "Social proof" and may lead to cascade effects, when everybody is just following everybody elses example without critically evaluate their actions. The banking crises that we now see the consequences of can be said to be caused by caskading effects in the way it seemed wise to be lending out money.
I have to agree with Wombat, that Surowiecki often leave to his readers to create a structure of all the information that he is handing out, often several examples stocked on top of each other. It's easy to loose track a bit and not always be sure what a certain example is an example of. Many are informative, several are entertaining, it's just a bit to much of the good stuff, some stringency, cutting and editing, would make a better book. When avilable in a "Wisdom for Dummies" - edition, I wont hesitate to recomend it to anyone, cause there are some inspiring toughts and thoughtful examples in there.
Surowiecki, J. (2004). Wisdom of Crowds - Why the Many Are Smarter Then the Few. London: Abacus.
..and time is up!
The assignment: User Participation Everyday, is to be found here.
Pollenchock och hårddiskkrach
Eftersom jag i sista minuten har bestämt mig för att ändra inriktning för min skoluppgift och inrikta mig på hur communities, chattar och våra uppkopplade nätverk påverkar hur vi organiserar vårt sociala liv IRL har jag sökt igenom nätet efter litteratur på området. Eftersom tiden är knapp har leveranstid varit en viktig faktor. Ett av guldkornen var Tara Brabazons The revolution will not be downloaded (som ironiskt nog inte finns tillgänglig som e-bok, pdf eller någon annan form av nerladdningsbart format). Jag hinner precis lägga in en beställning på ett pappersexemplar när min dator drabbas av en allvarlig men fördröjd pollenchock! Plötsligt är hela skrivbordet nedlusat av blåa rektanglar kryddadde med gula ankor och jag och datorn är oense om ifall det är två eller tjugotvå pdf:er öppna, och framförallt hurvida de ska stängas eller inte. Skrämmande, tur att det finns kladdkaka! Misstänker att det snart är dags för en ny dator, men den riktiga hårddiskkrachen kom inte idag och förhoppningsvis kommer det att dröja ännu ett tag.
* För eventuella ordmärkare med åsikten att på datorn skulle vara en lämpligare preposition än i datorn, vill jag påpeka om att min laptop är av vintagemodell vars livserfarenhet finns tecknad i sprickor i chassit.
Book review, Inside Facebook
When first browsing through the chapter division I was most interested in the following chapters; Building a Site Without Tools or Controls, The Power of the Social Internet, The Internet and Global Social Networks, Facebooks Vision and maybe most of all The Future of Social Networking. Unfortunately its the chapters like You Really can Achieve anything, and How I Got In and How you Can, Too, that is setting the tone.
From a chapter named Building a Site Without Tools or Controls, you would expect some words about how to think about UI, intuitive design, usability testing, vision, target users, etc, etc. Thereon nada. This chapter is not focusing on what goal or vision they were working towards, but how the developers were supervised doing it; cool cool, fun fun, unorganized, cool cool. And no content.
It would be exiting to know something about how the increasing technology maturity among ordinary users pushes the boundaries. What is possible to do and still provide a user-friendly environment? Is eye-tracking a technique used by Facebook for measurability and usability testing?
Baloun is making a big fuzz about how much better facebook are at protecting their users integrity, compared to other social networking sites. I suppose that is in the eye of the beholder, what you will see as security and what you will see as a integrity overstep depends on if you want to be protected from corporate big brother, or gangsta little peers.
From the chapter the future of social networking, I was kind of hoping for an educated guess, from a person of Balouns former position and experience, but even though I know that nobody can be expected to predict the future, it seems to me that he is just grabbing anything out of thin air. Its OK to not have a good answer at any time, but its not like he is surprised by paparazzi s demanding a quote, he is writing a book, he had time to think about it!
My thoughts on the matter is that I think that we will se an increase in smaller, portable devices, and that it will increase the use of microblogs and other quick "on the fly" applications. I also think we are going to see a lot more scalable applications, a simple version for the mobile device, and a more complex for the home computer. There might also be some kind of peer to peer applications on the portable devices, and I suppose a further use of GPS-coordinates, sensing whenever a friends device is close by. -taking the social media further in to IRL.
In “Inside Facebook” Baloun give his readers a lot of advices in the area of how to be able to live your dream. Somehow most of the advises makes me think about the old story about a man getting hooked by the ad “send me 100 dollar and learn how to play the piano” and a week later he gets a letter in return reading “thank you for the money, now you just have to learn how to play the piano."
One advice that wasn't in the book however was is “do not hesitate to ask for advice in time when you are clueless”. The book is printed double spaced, with a sans-serif font witch makes it kind of hard to get a real flow in the reading. I wish Baloun would have asked for some advice in that matter.
Baloun really care about the environment and seem to have an honest wish to help his readers reach their personal achievements. I wish him the same, but I hope to never again read anything written by the man.
Baloun, K. (2007). Inside Facebook - Life, Work and Visions of Greatness. Oxford: Trafford Publishing.
