[FRIAM] Amazon.com: The Wisdom of Crowds: Books: James Surowiecki

[Jochen Fromm]

That's a good summary of the basic book thesis, but in my
humble opinion it is already widely applied, because it seems
to be the fundamental principle behind the "Web 2.0" buzzword.
The power of "Web 2.0" systems comes from the centralization 
of decentralized information, from the unification and aggregation
of widely distributed knowledge: user-generated content 
(file-sharing, information-sharing, blogs, blogging, and wikis) 
and user-organized content (tags, tagging, and "folksonomy"), see
http://www.vs.uni-kassel.de/systems/index.php/Web_2.0

-J.


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam-bounces at redfish.com [mailto:Friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 6:02 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Friam
Subject: [FRIAM] Amazon.com: The Wisdom of Crowds: Books: James Surowiecki

The thesis is that good decisions can be made by crowds if they are:
- Diverse
- Independent
- Decentralized
- Good method for aggregating the results.

I started on the book a while back while discouraged after the  
democrats shot themselves in the foot the last election.  Thinking  
crowds were stupid, I was surprised a bit by the author's thesis.

Anyone read it?  Have opinions?  Got ideas how to apply it to  
community modeling?

     -- Owen