Wise crowds (and stupid mobs)

I'm reading James Surowiecki's excellent book 'The Wisdom of Crowds' at the moment. I was particularly taken by his introduction in which he relates the story of Sir Francis Galton, and his discovery, against his own assumptions, that collective intelligence not only exists, it is generally correct in its judgements. Galton's experiment was based on a 'guess the weight of an ox' competition in which 800 people participated. His statistical analysis of the results showed that as a collective mean score, the people guessed accurately to within one pound of the actual weight. This discovery of the people's collective ability ('democracy' as he called it) to make decisions that are of the most benefit to the people, attracted me for a number of reasons. Firstly, Galton made his discovery in a farm show in Plymouth, England (my home town). Secondly, Galton was one of the UK's first psychologists (I trained as a psychologist too), and although I disagree profoundly with many of his ideas about intelligence, which led him to champion eugenics, I can't help but admire the way he trailblazed his ideas about human behaviour, forensic psychology and statistics long before other, more famous psychologists. Thirdly, his scientific integrity is inspirational. Against his own deep seated beliefs, and in opposition to his previous scientific studies, the results of his 'West of England' regional fare research showed that in fact, when a crowd is asked to make a decision, they usually get it right.

James Surowiecki goes on to argue that the principles behind this idea can explain everyday activities including the stock market, democratic voting processes, gambling and even the fact that when you go the a convenience store at 2 am for a carton of milk, there is one there waiting for you. The wisdom of crowds even explains the phenomenon of Web 2.0 and social networking tools, and specifically, as we have long understood, it defines why web services such as Wikipedia and Google Search have become so popular and accurate over the last few years. Surowiecki argues that in many cases, the judgements of larger diffuse crowds of people is actually more accurate than the decision making of smaller, more elite groups. I have clung to this ideal in the development of many of my recent teacher education programmes, into which I have incorporated collaborative and co-operative online tools such as wikis, so that students can create, share and negotiate their learning related content.

If you haven't read Surowiecki's book yet (it was first published in 2004), do try to get hold of it. You can purchase it quite cheaply on Amazon (another wisdom of crowds example) and I promise you, it is a very good read. It's also, dare I say it, an effective foil to Andrew Keen's book 'The Cult of the Amateur' which warns against the dangers of Wikipedia and similar web repositories, describes what I can loosely term as 'stupidity of mobs'. If anyone has read both books and cares to provide a valued judgement on them, the comments box below is ready for you...

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