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Surowiecki, J. (2005). The wisdom of crowds. New York: Anchor Books (306 pp., $14.00 pb, ISBN: 0-385-72170-6).
Have you ever taken the time to seek separate medical opinions from multiple physicians about your treatment options? Or have you called several close friends to seek their advice before making an important life decision? You weigh in on each person's counsel and then make your final decision based on the many pieces of information that you have collected. Would your decision be superior to a choice that you would have made in isolation? Suroweicki would say yes.
Suroweicki is a proponent of collective intelligence and the ability of a group to solve concrete, well-defined problems and to make decisions that will be intellectually better than those of the isolated individual over time. He makes a solid case for this argument by discussing different types of problems (cognition, coordination, and cooperation) and necessary conditions for the crowd to be wise (diversity, independence, and decentralization). The second part of the book deals with...