Cass R. Sunstein — Infotopia: How Many Minds produce Knowledge — Oxford University Press, 2006, 273 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-534067-9
(Buy at Amazon)
In this short book, Cass Sunstein explains how collaborative and deliberation processes affects the propagation and the use of information (especially in reaching a decision) in a group.
The book is divided in six chapters where are explained, successively, how a large amount of imprecise and unstructured information can be put to use to get comparatively precise estimates and correct decisions; how and why deliberation groups (such as a jury) can fail in discovering objective truth or even take an enlighten decision; which are the four great problems we are facing when we want to use the knowledge of many people; the hayekian perspective of information, that is, information as a market; how new media, and especially the Internet (wikipedia, blogs, etc.) changes the propagation and the accuracy of information. Finally, there’s a recap chapter that sums up the contents of the book and offers new perspectives.
Probably you should read the Petit cours d’autodéfense
intellectuelle (n⁰9) and Linked as well.
