Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

A month ago I read Digital Maoism, an article by Jaron Lanier which argued that because so many in the Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) have an unquestioning belief that technology is here to solve all our problems, that extreme views (including, as he argues, collectivism) have mainstream appeal among technologists. I had a hard time with his argument that anonymity and the neutral viewpoint on Wikipedia leads to either bad writing or persistent inaccuracies on the site, but listening to Open Source's episode with Lanier, James Surowiecki and David Weinberger I found myself agreeing with Weinberger the most (Surowiecki and Lanier mostly agreed with each other, disagreeing mostly on emphasis and to which cases the "wisdom of crowds" applies). Where Weinberger argues that “having an extended conversation in which they are trying to get past themselves so they can get to something they agree on and write it down”, Lanier can only disagree by pointing to the discussion pages, which can get pretty raucous. I believe Weinberger meant the pages themselves, which are, in a sense, “extended conversations” towards what Cory Doctorow calls "the current negotiated truth".

Pamela Paul: “While the temptation to correct errors - which often reverberate from blog to blog - can be strong, counterblogging can be counterproductive. Authors report sad tales of the flaming feedback loops that follow such confrontations.”

The article links to the most blogged-about books of 2005, and I'm linked on the page for Are Men Necessary? by Maureen Dowd (which links to my 'just quote' of a review of the book). Most of the writers asked seem overly-sensitive about reactions they read in weblogs, but then again, aren't writers overly-sensitive to begin with? (And the same for bloggers?) Dowd seems the most sensible about following what bloggers say about her by deploying human filters—her assistant and her sister—to forward her the important reactions.

Dowd's book is not listed in the top-20 list, however, but two technical aspects of the list strike me as interesting: you do not need an account to view the list and also search engines are allowed to index the list, though not archive it in a cache. (But what, no links so that I can purchase any of the books, with the newspaper getting a cut?) It's unusual for The New York Times to allow search engines to index anything—but it's very smart, because users coming in through search engines are more likely to click on the ads which most bloggers and weblog readers probably have learned to ignore.

Here are the books on the list that I've read, with, if applicable, a link to my short review for each:

• 3. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (my brief review)
• 5. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen (my brief review)
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
• 12. The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki (my selection as best book of 2004)
• 14. 1984 by George Orwell (my favourite book of all time)

Best Book of 2004: The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. Along with Moneyball by Michael Lewis, and The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, The Wisdom of Crowds is the latest to attack conventional wisdom in an accessible way. Surowiecki argued very compellingly that groups of relatively independent and diverse individuals with well-aggregated information can make better decisions and are more accurate about matters of fact than the "experts". In fact, Surowiecki almost advocates distrusting experts entirely, a remarkably unconvential piece of advice.

Honorable Mentions: Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. The book was read by people I admire for a collaborative audiobook project. Lessig writes with passion and humility about copyright law and digital rights management and other threats to our culture from government and business. He's a believer in copyright and the protections it affords, but he argues that the music and motion picture industries fundamentally misunderstand the nature of creativity and are acting extremely inconsistently with the tradition of using the past to create the future. Also: Gay Marriage by Jonathan Rauch, which had an interesting effect on my views of heterosexual marriage; The Corporation by Joel Bakan. I covered the book for One Book One Vancouver 2004 and interviewed the author.

I didn't read a lot of books published in 2004, but the ones I read were excellent.

Finished reading The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki.

Clive Thompson: “collaboration has a long history in art. Plays are frequently infected with ideas that came from actors or even sound engineers. Some Shakespeare scholars wonder whether some of the Bard's lines came from onstage improvisations by actors. And though many of today's writers and creators would never admit it, editing by committee can rescue an overindulgent work. Collaboration is old hat.”

Thompson mentions a book (okay, one of the books) I'm currently reading, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki (notes forthcoming), and examines the phenomenon of Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia project suggesting that crowds can be creative as well as excellent decision-makers and predictors and resources of knowledge.

Jonathan Delacour also explored Wikipedia and had an epiphany about wikis: “there’s something about the wiki way of tracking a conversation that I find more appealing: it feels more natural to store the conversation in one location (rather than having identical copies in each participants Gmail account); and, now that I’m converted, the ability to edit the entries (and roll back to previous versions) seems essential.”