On "Getting" the Wisdom of Crowds
Kathy Sierra has a wonderful post on how she finally "got" the point behind The Wisdom of Crowds.
Her assumptions prior to "getting it" seem to exemplify many of the conversations I had and comments I heard while at SXSW. What I found out quickly when I started asking, was that most of the objections to embracing the idea came from people who's primary interaction with the book had been to hear its title.
I even heard this echoed from one of my co-panelists while on the panel about how she had dealt with the crowd as a librarian and absolutely didn't want them in charge of determining anything.
If all you go on is the title, you are likely envisioning (like Kathy did) consensus decisionmaking and "mobs". I say that because that's what almost everyone I asked about it said.
Yet, within the first couple of pages, the author makes a big distinction about the type of crowd he's talking about. When you ask people to contribute individually and then aggregate the results, you get a wise crowd. When you ask people as a group to agree and come up with a decision, you don't.
If you find yourself upset about the phrase "the wisdom of crowds" and haven't read the book, you should at least give Kathy's post a read.
If you decide to argue with me about this concept and you haven't done that, you won't get very far.
