| | |  | Consumer Behavior | Home » » » » » The Wisdom of Crowds | | | | | | | Description: | | In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant–better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.
With boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world. | | | Features: | |
• ISBN13: 9780385721707
• Condition: New
• Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| James Surowiecki | | Paperback:
| 336 pages | | Publisher:
| Anchor | | Publication Date:
| August 16, 2005 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0385721706 | | Package Length:
| 7.9 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.2 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.8 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.55 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 192 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
0 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Poor ServiceAug 11, 2010
I was very disappointed with the service of this product (from the seller). I ordered this book on July 8th for a Graduate Class that I am taking. After shipping said it would take maximum 12 days for the shipping that I paid for, I then recieved an e-mail saying the estimated arrival date was to be July 30. Now it is August 11th and I still have yet to recieve this book. I went to Barnes and Noble to purchase the book. Class ends this week and still no book. I disputed charges through my credit card. Very disappointed in Amazon services.
Excellent account, but missing something crucialJul 06, 2010
Surowiecki does an excellent job of introducing readers to the wonders of how the sum is truly greater than its parts. People and things in aggregate can affect changes both expected (rush hour traffic on the Cross Bronx Highway) and unimaginable (finding a lost submarine by synthesizing the independent conclusions of a group of experts from various professional backgrounds), banal (discovering the average number of jelly beans in a jar) and momentous (bursting bubbles, whether real estate-, technology-, or bowling-related). Surowiecki draws his evidence and examples from a host of studies that deal with everything from economic games to monkey experiments, and writes in a lively style that comes across as less WSJ and more Wired.
Ever wonder why the crowd in Who Wants to Be A Millionaire seemed to always answer correctly more frequently than the "genius friend" on the other side of "Phone-A-Friend"'s line?
Ever wonder why you ought to pay your taxes, even if that dastardly fellow down the street doesn't-- and gets away with it, easily?
Ever wonder why bottom-up, as opposed to top-down, management structures and styles are the future of innovation in business, more and more championed, and yet exist still more as fancy than reality?
Then read The Wisdom of Crowds.
But don't read this book in order to understand just why crowds of vexed commuters might scream "Jump, b*tch!" at a young woman contemplating suicide from high atop a bridge. The "experts" blame the anonymity of the crowd, or "dev-individuation", but what does that really mean for us individuals, then? That our private "quirks" or "disturbances" need only the chaos of a blurry mob to find themselves exit and escape?
Surowiecki speaks on how, in order for a crowd to be collectively wise, the following four conditions are in order:
1) Diversity of Opinion
2) Independence
3) Decentralization
4) Aggregation
I would venture to say that a number five, morality, might be necessary. Market capitalism is the highest form of economy exactly because it (unlike socialism, say) understands most deeply, and indeed "capitalizes" upon the human condition. Surowiecki briefly touches upon the need for mutual trust, formed first between neighbors and then "evolved" to stretch between strangers, in order for one to, say, walk into the cornerstore, buy a Coke, and trust that it'll taste like a Coke and not like sewer sludge. However, I would have liked to see a greater discussion of how we as individuals are moved not simply by the propensity to what's best for ourselves, but also by what we see as "right". Does a group consensus on "morality" influence how collectively "wise" it is? Is it truly those "radicals", as Surowiecki described them, with their low thresholds for violence that lead susceptible others to riot? Or do they we all have loose, wild agents within that in the secret strain to be let out? In other words, does the greater group of homo sapiens need first to be told what is right or wrong before it may truly be "wise" as a collective?
If corporations need laws and cars need traffic lights in order to function properly-- that is, wisely, for inanimate things-- as a system, then do not people need some form of moral code to altogether think rightly as a group? Surowiecki notes that our biases, or tendencies towards incorrect extremes, are canceled out in the static of the aggregate. These valuations, however, are fact-based, and non-moral in nature. I would therefore question whether or not the group would do the same for moral judgments, and ask if it is more important to agree firstly upon what is (morally) right, before we may ask what is (factually) right. I believe an answer to this would address, at least in part, the almost entrenched nature of large-scale corporate corruption and mismanagement. For surely Kenneth Lay of Enron could not be excused simply in light of the "de-individuating" force of his crony crew?
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Another clever dick from Wall Street?May 31, 2010
This book has some intersting points. For example then it recounts an example which tells that a crowd of laymens collective assesments of the weight of an ox at a county fair is actually more accurate than the experts assesment. And thus Surowiecki means to tell that a crowd of independent people are actually more smart than an expert. The text of the book is around 270 pages, but in my opinion Surowiecki stops being interesting already around page 60. The rest of the book seems to be material he has just amassed because he had to fill out the pages of the book. Yeah actually he could have made a much thiner pamphlet to get his message across! And also the message that crowds can be intelligent, is that something new? After all a substantial part of the evolution of human culture and knowhow is a result of the wisdom of crowds - isn't it? So one get this sneaking feeling that James Surowiecki is yet another of these clever dicks from Wall Street, trying to give foolish people the impression that he has found the key to how they really can start to make money in big scale.
 Great readMay 22, 2010
I really enjoyed this book. If you are interested in social psychology at all then you might like it too. It is a longer book but I stayed interested in it the whole way through and the topics flowed nicely and were well written and explained even if you weren't familiar with the topic.
A must for all corporate executives and security professionals, especially those with large client services practices or crisisApr 23, 2010
A must for all corporate executives and security professionals, especially those with large client services practices or crisis management responsibilities. "
| | |
|
