For Thinking About Networks this week Clay had us read “Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecky. This article contains the following gem:
“James Shanteau is one of the country’s leading thinkers on the nature of expertise, and has spent a great deal of time coming up with a method for estimating just how expert someone is. Yet even he suggests that ‘experts’ decisions are seriously flawed”
Ha ha ha. This is the funniest thing I’ve read in a while. Neil Postman would have a field day with that.
However, the article does eventually redeem itself towards the end when it moves on to talking about how even a well-informed person’s decisions should be combined with those of others to reach a good final outcome.
I also read “Folksonomies – Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata” by Adam Mathes all about folksonomy, tagging, community catergorisation. Worth a read if you’re interested in the tagging thing, which I am, particularly in the context of putting VideoBlast together.
Finally, the great Terbo Ted the story of a Friendster addict. A must for anyone who once loved Friendster. It made me go back for the first time in months. I still think that Friendster touched on something really great – the ability to visualise your social network (or a part of it that was on Friendster) was delightful and could be useful. I love the idea of having Friendster to check into once a year or so to find out who is doing what in my friends of friends, who I see occasionally and like but will only ever keep up with on the grapevine. As an online grapevine, it is pretty cool I think.
