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Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge
by: Cass R. Sunstein

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.4833
EAN: 9780195189285
ISBN: 0195189280
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: August 24, 2006
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Sales Rank: 212694
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
The rise of the 'information society' offers not only considerable peril but also great promise. Beset from all sides by a never-ending barrage of media, how can we ensure that the most accurate information emerges and is heeded? In this book, Cass R. Sunstein develops a deeply optimistic understanding of the human potential to pool information, and to use that knowledge to improve our lives.
In an age of information overload, it is easy to fall back on our own prejudices and insulate ourselves with comforting opinions that reaffirm our core beliefs. Crowds quickly become mobs. The justification for the Iraq war, the collapse of Enron, the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia--all of these resulted from decisions made by leaders and groups trapped in 'information cocoons,' shielded from information at odds with their preconceptions. How can leaders and ordinary people challenge insular decision making and gain access to the sum of human knowledge?
Stunning new ways to share and aggregate information, many Internet-based, are helping companies, schools, governments, and individuals not only to acquire, but also to create, ever-growing bodies of accurate knowledge. Through a ceaseless flurry of self-correcting exchanges, wikis, covering everything from politics and business plans to sports and science fiction subcultures, amass--and refine--information. Open-source software enables large numbers of people to participate in technological development. Prediction markets aggregate information in a way that allows companies, ranging from computer manufacturers to Hollywood studios, to make better decisions about product launches and office openings. Sunstein shows how people can assimilate aggregated information without succumbing to the dangers of the herd mentality--and when and why the new aggregation techniques are so astoundingly accurate.
In a world where opinion and anecdote increasingly compete on equal footing with hard evidence, the on-line effort of many minds coming together might well provide the best path to infotopia.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Like The Wisdom of Crowds without the hype
There's a lot of overlap between James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds and Infotopia, but Infotopia is a good deal more balanced and careful to avoid exaggeration. This makes Infotopia less exciting but more likely to convince a thoughtful reader. It devotes a good deal of attention to conditions which make groups less wise than individuals as well as conditions where groups outperform the best individuals.
Infotopia is directed at people who know little about this subject. I found hardly any new insights in it, and few ideas that I disagreed with. Some of its comments will seem too obvious to be worth mentioning to anyone who uses the web much. It's slightly better than Wisdom of Crowds, but if you've already read Wisdom of Crowds you'll get little out of Infotopia.

Rating:

- Mind opening
After reading Linked, and Freakonomics, this is helping me chase down yet more ideas about how the underlying networks on which society functions work. Or don't work.

Rating:

- very useful little book
thought provoking useful book with wide application. i am very interested in social media & how to use vehicles such as blogs & wikis.

also, very insightful and counterintuitive info about group processes, decision-making ect

written in a simple clear way

Rating:

- Read the 1/5 about deliberation, leave the rest.
In the 1960's, legal scholars discovered what the rest of us always knew: that pure legal scholarship is really, really boring. Law and economics demonstrated that a multidisciplinary approach could breath fresh life into the corpse of law. Then, suddenly, all the rock star law professors were interdisciplinarians. And along with this devaluation of pure legal thought came a general loss of intellectual rigor. By the 1990's, celebrity law professors were becoming like journalists with really good grades, each writing outside of his or her area of competence with an astonishing self-confidence. Richard Posner, who was on relatively solid ground in economics, crowned himself an expert on military intelligence. Lawrence Lessig wrote a whole series of books without any thesis or logical argument. And this new breed of scholar seemed to be in a race to publish as much as possible as quickly as possible, without ... Read More

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