Friday, June 16, 2006

Post-QOTD As follow-up to yesterday's quote-of-the-day by Charles Mackay on herd-think, compare and contrast with Jaron Lanier's bit on digital Maoism over on John Brockman's The Edge, followed by the responses thereto, including thoughts on collectivism, hive-mind, the wisdom of crowds, and so on. I really don't know how to sort it all out, except to say that it's not about Wikipedia; riots are an example of group-think at its worst; and the best designs come from solo individuals. And a platypus is a duck designed by a committee. And all too often, consensus is the lowest common denominator, just like accepted wisdom and common knowledge and common sense. I don't have time to read all the books, so you'll just have to figure it out yourselves[~]one by one. 3:05:50 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

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