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‘Wisdom of crowds’ vs. knowledge of experts
The “wisdom of crowds” is a fashionable phrase, made popular by James Surowiecki’s book with the same name. The book’s subtitle pretty much defines the term: “Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations.” Surowiecki is not the only author to think the masses are smart—“Group Genius” by Keith Sawyer destroys the myth of the lone genius and replaces it with the idea that collective effort generates most useful ideas and inventions. Don Tapscott’s “Wikinomics” reveals the power of mass collaboration, while Barry Libert in his “We Are Smarter Than Me” shows how anyone in business can profit from crowd intelligence.
The Wikipedia is a well-known example of group synergy, but online crowd collaboration is being harnessed for lots of purposes. The mutual fund Marketocracy was formed to tap the collective knowledge of investors; TripAdvisor offers user-generated reviews on cruises, hotels and restaurants; CrowdSpirit draws upon the power of crowds to develop gadgets and consumer electronics; the Industry Standard has a “predictions” market where people can wager on popular propositions; Eureka Medical provides a place for group inventors to conceive great ideas for medical breakthroughs; and at CreativeCrowds the aim is to empower ideas through crowdsourcing.
Not everyone praises the wisdom of crowds. Lee Siegel, the author of “Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob,” contends that bloggers are imperiling mainstream news sources, and in doing so are elevating anonymous hacks and phonies to the status of sage. Andrew Keen, in his book “The Cult of the Amateur,” examines the consequences of participation in Web. 2.0. He sees it as eroding the authority of expertise and the flood of user-generated free content that it produces as threatening traditional authors, artists, editors, journalists, musicians and other producers of quality information and entertainment. Keen believes that today’s participatory Internet is actually jeopardizing our values and killing our culture.
So in the end, will the world of Web 2.0, with its blogs, wikis, Facebooks and YouTubes, lead to the creation of a delicious stone soup or to an overcrowded kitchen where too many cooks spoil the broth?
—Don Hartman, University Libraries