What is Collective Wisdom?
The concept of collective wisdom is founded on the belief that a group of people with diverse opinions who can express themselves independently will generally make better decisions than a lone expert. Many studies have proven this to be true. The best resource we’ve found on collective wisdom is the book, The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki. Collective wisdom is not about building consensus. It is not about gathering a group of people and asking them to make decisions together. The key to collective wisdom is to gather diverse and independent opinions. The voting booth is one good place to do this. The Internet is another. People who write consumer product reviews online can write whatever they want–it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks or does, and there are no negative repercussions to disagreeing with popular opinion. The Internet is the new frontier for collective wisdom. Other web sites based on the idea of collective wisdom include Wikipedia.org, Digg.com and Technorat
