A Broadside Against Collectivism

Posted on May 31st, 2006
By Todd Zeigler in Media, Other

Wow. Just read a great essay on Edge called “DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism” by computer scientist Jaron Lanier. The essay is a massive broadside against the trend towards collective editing and decision-making that is taking hold online (the Wisdom of Crowds trend). Lanier takes aim at the use of collectivism in venues as diverse as Wikipedia (and all Wikis really), American Idol, Google and news aggregator sites like Digg and PopURLs. It’s a great, thought provoking piece.

Here is my favorite quote from the piece:

“…an individual best achieves optimal stupidity on those rare occasions when one is both given substantial powers and insulated from the results of his or her actions. If the above criteria have any merit, then there is an unfortunate convergence. The setup for the most stupid collective is also the setup for the most stupid individuals.”

And Damien’s favorite:

“The hive mind should be thought of as a tool. Empowering the collective does not empower individuals — just the reverse is true. There can be useful feedback loops set up between individuals and the hive mind, but the hive mind is too chaotic to be fed back into itself.”

Anyway, read it.

On an unrelated note, I found this on a great blog called Rough Type. Worth a read too.

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Comments

JoeLeBlanc

June 1st, 2006 at 8:26 am

There are a few things separating Wikipedia from “socially driven” websites such as Digg:

1) The quality of the articles is not traffic driven.
2) Hotly debated topics are closely monitored and frequently locked.
3) You have the option of seeing every revision and the ‘talk’ page can be used to identify potential biases.

That said, the article seems to be spot on about the hive mentality. Slashdot has long suffered these problems, where people frequently vote comments based on false premises as ‘insightful’.
Todd Zeigler

June 1st, 2006 at 6:38 pm

I actually think the criticism in the essay of sites like Slashdot and Digg is a bit over the top. These sites aren’t authoratative resources on anything - they are ways to find a needle in the haystack of online informatin. I use them to discover interesting articles. They most certainly aren’t replacements for reading “real” newspapers like the WP and NYT. I think if used properly these sites can be entertaining and even useful. But they are what they are - the hive mind in action.

Wikipedia aspires to be more than that - the sum of all human knowledge or whatever. I think that is why it drives so many people crazy when its flaws are exposed.

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