sxsw surowiecki on the wisdom of crowds

sxsw surowiecki on the wisdom of crowds

James Surowiecki spoke at the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas on Saturday 11th March 2006 about the ideas in his bestselling book The Wisdom Of Crowds. It’s relevance to Web 2.0 loomed large

writes Deirdre Molloy

Its an extensive report on surowiecki’s views and theories from his book the wisdom of crowds

The bit that stuck out for me was Deidre’s summary

Someone raised the issue of the vast, untapped sources of collective intelligence that remain untapped in terms of the education system, and Surowiecki concurred that bureaucracies in general do a very poor job of tapping into their members intelligence

Something I would certainly agree with, and

James left us hanging with this tantalising paradox: we live in a moment where on the one hand we see the possibilities of collective, bottom-up emergent systems, and Web 2.0 is – in a way – a way to make that work. But countering that is the trend and desire for charismatic leadership and easy answers

My view is that communities will naturally find their leaders, who will achieve their status through collective group wisdom. This authority is earnt and therefore the authority is respected.

I think that where I have got with my research is that we now have to dig deeper into what the future may truly look like for us, economically, socially, politically and institutionally.

Surowiecki is one of the many that map out our potential future.

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