James Surowiecki argues that the blogosphere came of age during coverage of the Tsunami, delivering an unorganised yet participatory "collective portrait" in human terms to a public in need of information. His TED talk goes on to ask three key questions:
1. What motivates bloggers to blog?
The fact that bloggers are not motivated by a concrete reward demands that we expand our equation that value = money.
A vast body of quality content is generated and organised by individuals who do so for intangibles like attention, varying degrees of reputational capital and, more often than not, purely for the love of it.
This, as Surowiecki put it, for the traditional economist, is remarkable.
2. Does the blogosphere connect us to a previously untapped collective intelligence?
A vast body of quality content is generated and organised by individuals who do so for intangibles like attention, varying degrees of reputational capital and, more often than not, purely for the love of it.
This, as Surowiecki put it, for the traditional economist, is remarkable.
2. Does the blogosphere connect us to a previously untapped collective intelligence?
This is where the 'Wisdom of Crowds' comes in: Surowiecki's popular book.
The premise of the book is that a group of people is always more intelligent than even
its "smartest" member.
He describes Google as a collective intelligence: individual pieces of content are aggregated into a body of wisdom and perspective far greater than its individual parts.
How this applies to the blogosphere?
It is a distributed intelligence: one blogger or post might not meet a reader's requirements, but when we link, one to another, the cumulative resource is a whole to be reckoned with.
3. What is the dark side of the social media phenomenon?
This is the most interesting part of the discussion for me.
Surowiecki talks about how easy it is to be seduced by the decentralized, bottom-up structure of the internet.
And even, to buy into the Wisdom of Crowds.
But there is a caution: Networks.
Networks are handy, they connect us to each other, help us share information and give us a sense of community.
But they also inhibit our individuality.
They stop us from thinking for ourselves.
A network that links us, or ties us in too tightly to one another will start to generate themes or values that we all focus on, link to and blog about. "Piling onto" cumulative favourites, tarnishing the decentralized beauty of the net.
A crowd is only wise, cautions Surowiecki, when the individuals within that crowd are as independent as possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment