Creating Passionate Users: The "Dumbness of Crowds"

25 Jan 18

smwilli

collectiveintelligence web2.0 web2.0concepts

03 Nov 15

koey12345

isomassign3 kychungae isom1090Fall2015

One of the high-profile concepts of the Web 2.0 meme is community. Giving community the control. Letting the community make decisions. Trusting the community. And--if you're a lucky bubble-2.0er--letting the community do all the work while you collect the money.
"harnessing collective intelligence"
Art isn't made by committee.

Great design isn't made by consensus.

True wisdom isn't captured from a crowd.
even just sharing too much of your own specialized knowledge with others in the group is enough to taint the wisdom and dumb-down the group.
differences in individual knowledge that make the wisdom of crowds work, yet the trendy (and misinterpreted) vision of Web 2.0 is just the opposite--get us all collborating and communicating and conversing all together as one big happy collborating, communicating, conversing thing until our individual differences become superficial.

3 more annotations...

05 Jan 12

Glenn Colorado

crowd sourcing creating pationate users and customers

13 Jun 11

cioccas

" The new emphasis on net-enabled collaboration is all goodness and light until somebody gets an eye I poked out. Is it merely a coincidence that Apple, run by (as James Gosling put it) "a dictator with good taste" leads the way in tech design, while risk-averse companies using design-by-committee (or consensus) are churning out bland, me-too, incremental tweaks to existing products? And if that's true about companies, why do we think consensus will work on an even larger scale with "users" in Web 2.0?"

collaboration web2.0 community

27 Aug 10

Nick purkis

Use for H800 ECA

wisdom_of_the_crowds

16 Aug 10

Wayne Batchelder

collective_intelligence dumbness-of-crowds

02 Jul 10

Narelle Pilgrim

web2.0 Blogs Communication design collectiveintelligence

maitlandtafelib

web2.0 Blogs Communication design collectiveintelligence

01 Jun 10

robert leston

collaboration web2.0 community psychology social BeyondBook

05 May 10

Joseph Mornin

"Community. Wisdom of Crowds. Collective Intelligence. The new emphasis on net-enabled collaboration is all goodness and light until somebody gets an eye I poked out. Is it merely a coincidence that Apple, run by (as James Gosling put it) "a dictator with good taste" leads the way in tech design, while risk-averse companies using design-by-committee (or consensus) are churning out bland, me-too, incremental tweaks to existing products? And if that's true about companies, why do we think consensus will work on an even larger scale with "users" in Web 2.0?"

crowdsourcing collectiveintelligence

the most frustrating part for me is how the "Wisdom of Crowds" idea has been twisted and abused to mean virtually the opposite of what New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki says in the book of the same name. He opened a talk at ETech telling us that while ants become smarter as the number of collaborators increases, humans become dumber. In what is potentially the most misleading book/idea title in the history of the world, the "Crowds" in "The Wisdom of Crowds" was never meant to mean "mobs", "groups acting as one", "committees", "consensus" or even "high collaboration".

By "crowd,", I think he meant "more people", sure, but he also defined a big ol' set of constraints for how much togetherness people can have before the results became dumber. And it turns out, not that much. By "crowd", he was referring to a collection of individuals. Individuals whose independent knowledge (and "independent" is a key word in what makes the crowd "smart") is aggregated in some way, not smushed into one amorphous Consensus Result.
"Collective intelligence" is a pile of people writing Amazon book reviews.

"Dumbness of Crowds" is a pile of people collaborating on a wiki to collectively author a book.
(Not that there aren't exceptions, but that's just what they are--rare exceptions for things like reference books. I'm extremely skeptical that a group will produce even a remotely decent novel, for example. Most fiction suffers even with just two authors.)


"Collective Intelligence" is all the photos on Flickr, taken by individuals on their own, and the new ideas created from that pool of photos (and the API).

"Dumbness of Crowds" is expecting a group of people to create and edit a photo together.

"Collective Intelligence" is about getting input and ideas from many different people and perspectives.

"Dumbness of Crowds" is blindly averaging the input of many different people, and expecting a breakthrough.
(It's not always the averaging that's the problem it's the blindly part)

"Collective Intelligence" is about the community on Threadless, voting and discussing t-shirts designed by individuals.

"Dumbness of Crowds" would be expecting the Threadless community to actually design the t-shirts together as a group.
Clearly there IS wisdom in the many as long as you don't "poison" the crowd by forcing them to agree (voting doesn't mean agreeing). According to Surowiecki, even just sharing too much of your own specialized knowledge with others in the group is enough to taint the wisdom and dumb-down the group.
If you're one of the twelve people who haven't yet played with the 20Q "toy", you have no idea how scarily well this thing "guesses" what you're thinking about. The creepy thing isn't necessarily that it figures out you were thinking of thermometer, bra, microscope, painting, mp3 player, or lightbulb (all things it guessed correctly for me yesterday). The really creepy thing is how it got there from the questions it asked.
If I didn't know better, I'd swear it's using voice recognition to cheat. But no, it turns out there's a perfect explanation for its supernatural accuracy. The creator harnessed collective intelligence. Hundreds of thousands of people "taught" the program over a period of years, by playing software versions of his game. The program uses a neural net, and learned. It learned so well, in fact, that it learned a few dumb things

3 more annotations...

18 Oct 09

Will Parker

crowds psychology social intelligence collaboration community web2.0

19 May 09

Lisa Spiro

crowdsourcing

12 Jan 09

patarakin

crowds collectiveintelligence collaboration crowdsourcing

26 Nov 08

Stian Haklev

kb groups-vs-networks

02 Jun 08

Thieme Hennis

cool blogpost explaining Wisdom of Crowds, a criticism on how it is conceived by many.

blogpost collective-intelligence web2.0

11 Apr 08

Neil Saunders

blog article web2.0 community social collaboration

20 Mar 08

Aditya Banerjee

community collaboration design psychology crowds creativity

01 Mar 08

Gabriela Grosseck

collaboration socialnetworking socialsoftware

28 Feb 08

L@jost EU project

psihologie l@jost

laura malita

psihologie

07 Dec 07

Suvi Korhonen

web2.0 community collaboration social design intelligence psychology crowds wisdomofcrowds surowiecki

12 Oct 07

Phu Tu

socialdesign

10 Sep 07

Priscila PLO

blog article web2.0

06 Sep 07

Fabiano Caruso

collaboration collective del.icio.us innovation intelligence wisdomofcrowds

05 Aug 07

Adam Crowe

'"Collective Intelligence" is about the community on Threadless, voting and discussing t-shirts designed by individuals. "Dumbness of Crowds" would be expecting the Threadless community to actually design the t-shirts together as a group.'

collectiveintelligence herd hivemind collaboration criticism theory communities aggregation intelligence design psychology web

30 Jul 07

Richard Bamattre

blog web2.0 theory

27 Jul 07

Alec Couros

Excellent post re: dumbness of crowds!

articles social networks wisdom crowds dumbness web2.0

11 Jul 07

thbernhardt

CollectiveIntelligence WissdomOfCrowds

05 Jun 07

Philip Johnson

socialgatekeeping web2.0 collaboration crowdsourcing delicious

03 May 07

dannno

blog crowds dumbness social software web2.0 wisdom

19 Apr 07

Tom Hemingway

"while ants become smarter as the number of collaborators increases, humans become dumber"

creativity collaboration for:sivadeel

10 Apr 07

kazzmann

web2.0 blog issues collaboration

01 Apr 07

ingegnereatipico

web2.0 research business culture

27 Mar 07

Patrick Micka

Web Reference organization inspiration PhOG community

21 Mar 07

Pieter Ruiter

2007 collaboration web2.0 delicious

19 Mar 07

Steve Olson

intelligence

18 Mar 07

Douglas Karr

Community. Wisdom of Crowds. Collective Intelligence. The new emphasis on net-enabled collaboration is all goodness and light until somebody gets an eye I poked out.

Bookmarks Array web2.0 community collaboration social design intelligence psychology

15 Mar 07

urban sheep

crowdsourcing collaboration communityManagement community society socialsoftware intelligence

11 Mar 07

Julen Iturbe-Ormaetxe

colaboración comunidad InteligenciaColectiva

Gerhard Jan Nauta

blogposts web2.0 knowledge.construction.social collaboration quality

18 Feb 07

farmando

community collaboration social design intelligence psychology blog article

francesco armando

community collaboration social design intelligence psychology blog article

28 Jan 07

Caterina Policaro

Intelligenza collettiva, apprendimento collaborativo...

blog blogosfera community web2.0 collaboration social education

22 Jan 07

bartb

collaboration

19 Jan 07

Joe Murphy

Online - Community

Community. Wisdom of Crowds. Collective Intelligence. The new emphasis on net-enabled collaboration is all goodness and light until somebody gets an eye I poked out. Is it merely a coincidence that Apple, run by (as James Gosling put it) "a dictator with good taste" leads the way in tech design, while risk-averse companies using design-by-committee (or consensus) are churning out bland, me-too, incremental tweaks to existing products? And if that's true about companies, why do we think consensus will work on an even larger scale with "users" in Web 2.0?

18 Jan 07

Shay Brog

Collective intelligence vs. Dumbness of Crowds.

articles web2.0 design psychology intelligence networks sociology web cyberculture emergence creativity

17 Jan 07

Chris Bailey

Shades of Howard Rourke from The Fountainhead here.

collaboration creativity design social groups committees wisdom+of+crowds collective+intelligence online+community

Nancy White

collective_intelligence

15 Jan 07

gregc5nz

I liken the dumbness of crowds to assessment adn make parallels with scatterplotting.

opinion assessment

greg carroll

I liken the dumbness of crowds to assessment adn make parallels with scatterplotting.

opinion assessment

andretav

Cultura-livre Academicos

14 Jan 07

Andre Malheiro

Is it merely a coincidence that Apple, run by (as James Gosling put it) "a dictator with good taste" leads the way in tech design, while risk-averse companies using design-by-committee (or consensus) are churning out bland, me-too, incremental tweaks to e

design process team work research article rant

12 Jan 07

mrschippy Janet Hayes

usability design innovation creativity Design_Usability

11 Jan 07

Ton Zijlstra

great article on when collective intelligence becomes collective stupidity. "to leverage the We in Web we must not sacrifice the I in Internet."

smartmobs

Darrel Branson

wisdom_of_crowds web2.0 collaboration Kathy_Sierra

10 Jan 07

Howard Dale

Another piece of the difference between 'collective intelligence' and 'wisdom of crowds'.

wisdomofcrowds collectiveintelligence

09 Jan 07

anok / Valis

[Folder Name] Imported Bookmarks

Mo Engel

web2.0 huco wiki

08 Jan 07

davidkato

collaboration community web2.0 socialsoftware social technology

Ratcatcher

"In what is potentially the most misleading book/idea title in the history of the world, the "Crowds" in "The Wisdom of Crowds" was never meant to mean "mobs", "groups acting as one", "committees", "consensus" or even "high collaboration"."

collaboration people theory collectiveintelligence

Karla Lopez

Kathy Sierra sobre inteligencia coletiva e colaboracao

colaboracao web 2.0 comportamento

07 Jan 07

José Mota

A critique of some colelctive aspects of web 2.0

web2.0 tese kathy.sierra

Is it merely a coincidence that Apple, run by (as James Gosling put it) "a dictator with good taste" leads the way in tech design, while risk-averse companies using design-by-committee (or consensus) are churning out bland, me-too, incremental tweaks to existing products?
And the most frustrating part for me is how the "Wisdom of Crowds" idea has been twisted and abused to mean virtually the opposite of what New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki says in the book of the same name.
One of the high-profile concepts of the Web 2.0 meme is community. Giving community the control. Letting the community make decisions. Trusting the community.

1 more annotation...

Michel Bauwens

By "crowd,", I think he meant "more people", sure, but he also defined a big ol' set of constraints for how much togetherness people can have before the results became dumber. And it turns out, not that much. By "crowd", he was referring to a collection o

Collective-Intelligence Wisdom-of-Crowds P2P

Jane Mejdahl

"No matter what, I believe that in our quest to exploit the "We" in Web, we must not sacrifice the "I" in Internet."

culture web2.0

06 Jan 07

Mark Ahlness

readingjan07

Wilfred Rubens

Kathie Sierra becommentarieert het wisdom of crowds concept, ook in relatie tot web 2.0.

community learning social_media web2.0

david

wisdom_of_crowds

the wisdom found in that group CAN be smarter than the smartest individual in the group. But he never says the group itself becomes smarter when they work together to produce a result as a group.
s. Individuals whose independent knowledge (and "independent" is a key word in what makes the crowd "smart") is aggregated in some way, not smushed into one amorphous Consensus Result.
And if that's true about companies, why do we think consensus will work on an even larger scale with "users" in Web 2.0
James Surowiecki says in the book of the same name. He opened a talk at ETech telling us that while ants become smarter as the number of collaborators increases, humans become dumber. In what is potentially the most misleading book/idea title in the history of the world, the "Crowds" in "The Wisdom of Crowds" was never meant to mean "mobs", "groups acting as one", "committees", "consensus" or even "high collaboration"
. Clearly there IS wisdom in the many as long as you don't "poison" the crowd by forcing them to agree (voting doesn't mean agreeing). According to Surowiecki, even just sharing too much of your own specialized knowledge with others in the group is enough to taint the wisdom and dumb-down the group

3 more annotations...

cshirky

sierra lanier wisdom of crowds

Ben Ceschi

delicious

05 Jan 07

PG Holmlov

Content Human Customer experience

Is it merely a coincidence that Apple, run by (as James Gosling put it) "a dictator with good taste" leads the way in tech design, while risk-averse companies using design-by-committee (or consensus) are churning out bland, me-too, incremental tweaks to existing products? And if that's true about companies, why do we think consensus will work on an even larger scale with "users" in Web 2.0? ... He opened a talk at ETech telling us that while ants become smarter as the number of collaborators increases, humans become dumber. In what is potentially the most misleading book/idea title in the history of the world, the "Crowds" in "The Wisdom of Crowds" was never meant to mean "mobs", "groups acting as one", "committees", "consensus" or even "high collaboration". By "crowd,", I think he meant "more people", sure, but he also defined a big ol' set of constraints for how much togetherness people can have before the results became dumber. And it turns out, not that much. By "crowd", he was referring to a collection of individuals. Individuals whose independent knowledge (and "independent" is a key word in what makes the crowd "smart") is aggregated in some way, not smushed into one amorphous Consensus Result. ... What's the difference between Collective Intelligence and Dumbness of Crowds? A few examples: "Collective intelligence" is a pile of people writing Amazon book reviews. "Dumbness of Crowds" is a pile of people collaborating on a wiki to collectively author a book.
Is it merely a coincidence that Apple, run by (as James Gosling put it) "a dictator with good taste" leads the way in tech design, while risk-averse companies using design-by-committee (or consensus) are churning out bland, me-too, incremental tweaks to existing products? And if that's true about companies, why do we think consensus will work on an even larger scale with "users" in Web 2.0? ... He opened a talk at ETech telling us that while ants become smarter as the number of collaborators increases, humans become dumber. In what is potentially the most misleading book/idea title in the history of the world, the "Crowds" in "The Wisdom of Crowds" was never meant to mean "mobs", "groups acting as one", "committees", "consensus" or even "high collaboration". By "crowd,", I think he meant "more people", sure, but he also defined a big ol' set of constraints for how much togetherness people can have before the results became dumber. And it turns out, not that much. By "crowd", he was referring to a collection of individuals. Individuals whose independent knowledge (and "independent" is a key word in what makes the crowd "smart") is aggregated in some way, not smushed into one amorphous Consensus Result. ... What's the difference between Collective Intelligence and Dumbness of Crowds? A few examples: "Collective intelligence" is a pile of people writing Amazon book reviews. "Dumbness of Crowds" is a pile of people collaborating on a wiki to collectively author a book.

Paul Sweeney

Great little piece on user generated content and the Intelligence of Crowds

communication community socialnetworking

David Jennings

Couldn't have put it myself (and I have tried). via Jay Cross

wisdom of crowds collective intelligence design Digital culture

"Collective intelligence" is a pile of people writing Amazon book reviews. "Dumbness of Crowds" is a pile of people collaborating on a wiki to collectively author a book

04 Jan 07

Dan Creswell

collaboration community software development

N D

community technology essay social intelligence

1B-CheckLater

Wei-Jing Zhu

1B-CheckLater

Kent Sin

Jeremy Price

quickd

Eric Blue

community social

03 Jan 07

Isaac Pigott

Community. Wisdom of Crowds. Collective Intelligence. The new emphasis on net-enabled collaboration is all goodness and light until somebody gets an eye I poked out. Is it merely a coincidence that Apple, run by (as James Gosling put it) "a dictator with

Bookmarks community social intelligence blog occam theory web2.0 collaboration design psychology delicious

Pantelis Nasikas

article blog community design web2.0 webdesign web social_software social social_networks internet

Reed Lauber

articles psychology social web2.0 intelligence

Marie Coleman

SocialSoftware collaboration psychology web2.0

Thomas Vander Wal

A great post from Kathy Sierra saves me from writing a long brewing rant about the vast mis-understanding of the wisdom of crowds, understanding the distinction is important for social networking

kathysierra surowiecki collaboration collective communication community content definition design development emergence internet psychology social socialsoftware anthropology software technology tools web webdesign wisdom process news webdev localinfoclou

Adam Cutler

while ants become smarter as the number of collaborators increases, humans become dumber. In what is potentially the most misleading book/idea title in the history of the world, the "Crowds" in "The Wisdom of Crowds" was never meant to mean "mobs", "group

blog design usability creativity marketing blogs business crowd wisdom individuals

Alan Levine

The new emphasis on net-enabled collaboration is all goodness and light until somebody gets an eye I poked out.

collaboration creativity hznmc hz07 user_content ideas web2.0

Brian Fitzgerald

design development

Neil H

web2.0 internet

amar kasap

Community. Wisdom of Crowds. Collective Intelligence. The new emphasis on net-enabled collaboration is all goodness and light until somebody gets an eye I poked out. Is it merely a coincidence that Apple, run by (as James Gosling put it) "a dictator with

social networks academic