Thursday, January 4, 2007

TMI Oh, yes, sorry, for those of you who thought I was actually back to regular posting. Frankly, I'm suffering from chronic TMI: too much information. Some days I just have to shut down and not process any more. For example: despite my best intentions to spend part of my holiday break studying something semi-technical, I in fact spent most of the time digitizing some of my ancient vinyl records after rebuilding some shelves in my home office to accommodate stereo + turntable + laptop. It was a total kick to finally be able to turn some of my old favorites into MP3s without buying CDs--and some of what I have isn't on CD anyway. And I worked out how to capture streaming audio, another very satisfying accomplishment. And that's how I spent my winter vacation. . . 8:38:58 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

The non-wisdom of consensus Kathy has a dandy rant about the dangers of generalizing the supposed wisdom of crowds, especially by those who haven't bothered to read Surowiecki's book (The Wisdom of Crowds). She's quite right; I tried to summarize the book to my manager, it went something like this: under the right circumstances, with the right pre-conditions, the right group of people can make better decisions than an individual. Which is clearly not a blanket endorsement of group-think. Minor quibble: Surowiecki titled the book as a counterpoint to Charles Mackay's classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. He never intended to suggest that all crowds are wise. And if you haven't read the Mackay book, do it. If you don't look at the original publication date, you'll swear he's talking about the dot-com bust. 8:33:15 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

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