The Wisdom of Crowds
A couple of months ago I read "The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations" by James Surowiecki. I found the book to be an interesting look at the ability of groups of individuals to apply "private' knowledge to situations resulting in an uncanny "intelligence".
Today, I have come across two references to this book that are worthy of note. Wired.com runs an article about James Hong and Jim Young, founders of HotorNot.com. Interested in motivating people of all ages to participate in this year's American presidential election, the two are putting their wallets to work. The idea is to encourage people to not only be aware but to spread the word. What struck a chord was this quote:
"Part of this is inspired by a book Jim and I both read, The Wisdom of Crowds. The basic premise is that the crowd in many cases is smarter than individuals, based on having a large diversity of people inside who make their own judgments," Hong said. "What that means is, especially since this election is so close, the more people we can get to vote, the more likely the right answer will appear."
Also today, Stowe Boyd comments on Talkativeness, Influence, and Blogging. As he notes:
Why do I think these observations are relevant to blogging? First of all, blogging -- when done right -- is really a group discussion, if not actually a small group discussion (at least it shouldn't be a mass market broadcast, or NASDAQ setting stock prices). Blogging is a conversation between people.
Stowe touches on the effort required to produce compelling blog content. I've discussed this idea earlier when I defined the Blog Entry Archetypes. In defining the archetypes, I attempted to correlate the "success" (as measured by traffic, commentary, trackback, revenue, etc.) with the "effort" required to assemble the entry.
Stowe's main contention alludes to an emerging belief by some that blogging will not be successful by virtue of quantity but quality. Though it's easy enough to generate new links/content throughout a day, conversations form naturally around topics that research and explore ideas more so than those that simply map the dots.
I'd provide my own quotes from the book, but I gave away my copy immediately after I finished it.