The Wisdom [?] of Swarms

Rambling around the internet. Random links for further reading and thought:

"Blink vs. The Wisdom of Crowds." Slate's dialogue between Malcolm Gladwell and James Surowiecki.

An article on collective wisdom and investing. PDF.

And another one.

Apparently, this is a big topic in the internet world over whether website indexing for search and ranking purposes is best done by algorithms or by social networking. Here's a blog + discussion about the problem of information overload and the digg problematic.

"Why the Wisdom of Crowds Fails on Digg" [may be outdated]

"Weblogs and the Wisdom of Crowds". The title says it all.

A somewhat contrarian view: Web 2.0 and the stupidity of crowds.

Here, start your own social network at Ning.

Of course, if you follow the logic of our images, you will have noted our use of the Wikipedia logo. Wikis are collaborative efforts precisely geared to amass information from a crowd of sources. The debate concerns the wisdom of this. Certainly, a tremendous amount of information can be amassed. Information, however, does not equate to wisdom. And this is not at all personal in the way Canetti discusses.

Here's an article on the species wisdom of Homo sapiens sapiens.