Comments on: Making a moot point

By: Seven Lions » Blog Archive » Gaming the Systems - writing, research, art and digital media

Mon, 11 May 2009 15:55:50 +0000

[...]Another interesting point raised at Akahele (The cautious site with the beautiful name) highlights the problem of crowds: the concern for peer-produced data in an environment where some of those peers want to insert malicious, propagandistic or otherwise known-flawed results into a system. But the problem isn’t limited to peer-produced knowledge…[...]

By: wikademia

wikademia — Sun, 10 May 2009 05:24:21 +0000

that was hella funny

By: Jon Awbrey

Jon Awbrey — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:00:23 +0000

Like I Keep Saying ... Wikipedia has shown us that a mass medium can be rendered so plastic and so well-leveraged that any part of it can be manipulated by a relatively small number of people, in ways that defy a free society's usual means to guard against it, so long as the special interests in question have a moderate amount of resources and the will to do so. If there are portions of the content that remain untouched, it is for two reasons only: (1) no one has conceived a stake in them yet, (2) virgin forest makes for good cover. If you're thinking that Wikipedia is the Latest Thing in Blows Against The Empire, then you have a DoubleThink coming. Jon Awbrey, Comment in The Guardian, 30 Jan 2009, 2:02am

By: Barry Kort

Barry Kort — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:07:12 +0000

The Muses

There is wisdom and there is cleverness.

In a contest of wits, cleverness trumps wisdom.

Among the other diversions of the Internet, we find a variety of Massive Multi-Player Online AssClown Games in which the players progressively level up from Vandal to AssClown to Troll to Hacker to Satirist to Performance Artist.

The Peerless Performance Artist is a rare breed. Charlie Chaplin and Marcel Marceau pwned the genre in their day. Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Borat vie for the prize today.

A Peerless Performance Artist is not just clever.

A Peerless Performance Artist brings a peerless level of insight to the mirthful game.

Enlightenment is where you find it.

By: Cedric

Cedric — Tue, 05 May 2009 03:32:17 +0000

Great piece Judd. If I recall correctly, Surowiecki chose the title of his book to serve as a counterpoint to Charles Mackey’s famous Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (you can download a free copy of it here: http://www.archive.org/details/extraordinarypop014178mbp ). Although this book was written over 160 years ago, it has held up very well both in terms of its style and its content. It is rather long, but is still a quick read.

As your piece correctly asserts, the wisdom of crowds is easily enough, and quite often, subverted by anonymous sociopaths on the internet. Without the proper incentives to get it right, one can expect lots of drama, but precious little wisdom. I daresay that fifty years hence, Mackey’s book will still be read and appreciated by many, but Surowiecki’s will be largely forgotten.